


Rain on a Tin Roof

by ndnickerson



Series: Rain on a Tin Roof [2]
Category: Hardy Boys - Dixon, Nancy Drew - Keene
Genre: F/M, First Love, Forced Marriage, Infidelity, Married Sex, Requited Love, Resolved Sexual Tension, Second Chances, Sexual Content, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-19
Updated: 2009-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-04 15:14:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 32,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/31631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ndnickerson/pseuds/ndnickerson
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nancy finally chooses between Frank and Ned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Every time they made love, he went outside after and stood on the porch and smoked a cigarette.

She never said anything but she could always tell. His hair, his clothes smelled of it. She took him back into her arms, the faint texture of night air still traced on his skin, nestled into him and breathed in deep, missing it. She had snuck cigarettes during her pregnancy, although he never knew.

He brushed her red-gold hair back and pressed a kiss against her temple. Her blue eyes gleamed in the dark, but she didn't look up at his face.

He was going away again.

"When does your plane leave," she whispered into his chest.

"Early," he replied. "I'll take a cab. Don't worry about taking me."

She nodded. "All right."

"Love you."

She slid her folded arm under the pillow and closed her eyes. "Love you too."

\--

The grocery store was two blocks away from their house. Her hair still faintly damp from her shower, Nancy bundled Sam into a jacket and the stroller. They passed dirty patches of old snow in the shadows on the sidewalk, smog-stained trees and dead winter grass. Sam burbled to herself and Nancy closed her eyes, felt the wind on her cheeks.

He was gone again.

She kept her right hand steering the stroller and turned her engagement ring around and around on her left, above the slender gold wedding band. Sam was chattering happily at something, and Nancy lifted her and put her in the baby seat on the shopping cart. She blinked crystal-blue eyes up at her mother.

"Hey little girl," she cooed at Sam, who clapped.

Nancy knew the shop like the back of her hand. Fresh flowers outside, a small but selective produce section. Sam's tastes were easy. Her husband's, less so, only because his trips and thus arrivals were unpredictable. Steaks and ground beef spoiled, potatoes rotted in paper bags under the sink while she waited for him to come home. So she picked things she liked and kept the freezer stocked and hoped for the best.

A woman with two toddlers and a baby in the shopping cart made her way slowly down the aisles. Nancy looked at her, watched her rough flat hands drag the children back in as they circled her, knocking into displays and bringing boxes of cereal and chocolate bars to their mother for her inevitable refusal. She looked tired, angry lines etched around her thin lips.

Nancy looked at Sam. "We're not gonna be like that, are we," she whispered, her cheek against her daughter's, and Sam's face lit up.

Nancy had been married for two years and five months. Sam was just over two years old. They'd moved to a small house on the edge of the city when she was eight months pregnant, for his work. She'd been so relieved when he'd married her that she hadn't argued with him or disagreed with him about anything. Not the size of the house or the city or his conviction that she would stay at home with their daughter. He said detective work was too dangerous for her, now that she was a mother.

He said it was only until Sam went to school.

She put a box of microwave popcorn in the cart, boxes of pasta and jars of canned sauce, bags of chicken nuggets and french fries and frozen pizza. At the checkout the bored cashier swiped everything and gave Nancy the total, but she paused, tapping her card against the machine instead of swiping it.

"And a pack of cigarettes," Nancy said, defeat in her voice.

The taxi pulled up just as Nancy headed out of the store, her groceries loaded into the stroller. A man in a long dark grey wool coat rushed out of the backseat.

He had dark hair like her husband. Her gaze lingered on him. She could dimly hear the edge of Sam's voice, but couldn't make out the words.

He hesitated and turned, and she took a breath, looking away before their eyes could meet. Her cheeks flushed with sudden color at being caught. She had never been one to stare, especially not in the city.

"Nancy?"

She looked back, her face already carefully composed into serene dismissal, and then her eyes went wide, her face pale.

"My God," she exhaled. "Ned, is that you?"


	2. Chapter 2

Three years ago she had been on a train to Brussels. She was traveling on a red passport, the contents of which she couldn't read, though Frank had assured her it was authentic. He and Joe had similar passports, but Joe hadn't opted for Frank and Nancy's wire-rimmed glasses and business attire.

Joe was restless. "How much longer until we get there?" He glanced irritably at his watch.

"Long enough," Frank told him.

"I'm surprised we didn't rate a faster train," Nancy said.

"The conference doesn't start until tomorrow and the threats were only for after Mbatu's arrival, so there was no need. Although I don't think they factored in the cost of replacing the carpet," Frank said, glancing down at his brother's pacing feet.

"Very funny," Joe said. "There has to be something to eat around here."

The instep of Frank's gleaming brown shoe was barely touching Nancy's sensible pump, under the table. He gave his brother a bland glance, a slight shrug.

After Joe had disappeared through the sliding doors connecting the cars Frank stood and set off in the other direction, toward the sleeping berths. Nancy followed, her heart in her throat.

And then they were alone behind some anonymous door. His hand at her hair, his mouth on hers. He pulled her up into his arms, his fingertips hesitant on the silk stocking stretched taut over her knee. His glasses bumped hers.

She pulled back, then, and he lowered her, her mouth wet and red, both of them panting. She drew the back of her hand over her mouth.

"Ned," she whispered, almost mournful. "Callie," he replied, the same note of regret in his voice.

Even then, she stared up at him, stared at his mouth and the line of his jaw in the dark, and her hand rose to cup it gently. He put his hand over hers and waited. Again she felt the impetus to tilt her head back and wait for the kiss she knew he wanted to repeat, continue, never stop; again she felt the weight of the name, the breath she couldn't take back. Her gaze flicked to his and they trembled on the edge of it.

She closed her eyes and let her head drop and it was broken. She slipped her hand from beneath his, ran it over her smooth hair, tugged her skirt an imagined inch down.

"Sorry," he said.

One glance at his face told her that he had as little regret as she.

\--

In the middle of a Swiss lake she looked at him. They were drifting slowly with the wind, side by side on their stomachs in the bottom of a shallow boat, dressed in black and quiet as death, just in case they had been followed. Joe was already at the extraction point; the recovery had gone much more smoothly than planned, and they were a full twelve hours ahead of schedule.

"You keep looking at me," he breathed, the light stubble on his chin scraping against the slats.

Nancy folded her arm and cradled her chin. "Ned didn't take it well."

"You told him?"

His voice held nothing but mild surprise. She looked at him again.

"You haven't told Callie."

"No," he admitted quietly. "It was..."

Their gazes caught and locked. "It was nothing?" she finished for him, softly, but didn't break away.

His lips quirked up in a smile. "No," he said. "It was something."

They dragged the boat onto the shore together, covered it in loose branches and headed into a shack at the edge of the water. Frank gave the landscape a quick once-over, then followed her inside.

"I'll take the first watch."

Nancy tugged her sweater off, revealing a black tank top. She folded the sweater to serve as a pillow and curled up on her side, facing him.

"You gonna be okay?"

He smiled. "We won't be here that long."

She felt heavy, disoriented, slow and dull when he woke her. His fingers on her arm. Sometime in the night a light rain had begun. The air was thick with it, the scent of old leaves in moonlight. She turned her face into the sweater and moaned something, her eyelashes fluttering.

"Wake up," he murmured. His fingers trailed up her arm.

She gazed up at him. She could hear wind howling against the creaking walls, the rain, and then only her heart, her fingers running through his hair as he leaned down to kiss her.

When they joined Joe three hours later, their eyes didn't meet. "Everything go okay?" Joe asked, as he turned the key and the engine rumbled to life.

Nancy smiled vaguely, her downcast eyes blank. "I claim shotgun," she said.

\--

Nancy had not heard from Frank for a month, Ned for two. After her checkup, she and George were going to make the drive up to Emerson. 

For the first time in her life, Nancy felt like she could say it. That she could tell Ned she was willing to take the next step, with him. If he could forgive her. Over the past month her desire to see him, to hear his voice, had grown nearly unbearable. He would understand, he would...

"Nancy," the doctor said, returning, clipboard in hand as Nancy sat with her legs dangling over the edge of the exam table, in a paper gown, a faint blushed glow coloring her cheeks, shading her pleased smile.

Half an hour later, when she pulled up at George's house, Nancy's face was ashen. George pulled open the passenger door of Nancy's Mustang and ducked inside, her dark hair falling over her smiling face. She let her backpack fall into the seat, then gazed at Nancy.

"You okay? Did something happen on the way here?"

Nancy dragged a hand through her hair. "Um," she said faintly. "I don't know."

Bess arrived half an hour later, swinging the door of George's room open dramatically. "All right, I'm here." 

Nancy was sitting in George's desk chair, one leg folded under her. George was on the bed, her right leg jumping impatiently on the carpet. The walls of George's bedroom were lined with trophies and plaques, framed snapshots of her and the two of them in tennis whites and ski outfits. Her bedspread was a utilitarian navy blue. Nancy had turned on the radio upon entrance, but otherwise the two had sat in silence, waiting for their third to arrive.

Bess looked between the two of them and reached into the bag she was carrying, pulled out a pint of ice cream and a spoon, which she handed wordlessly to Nancy. Nancy mechanically worked the lid off and took a bite, held it on her tongue as Bess joined her cousin on the bed.

"A month ago," Nancy began. Her voice started shaking and she took another bite of ice cream, waiting for her nerves to steady.

"Take your time," Bess said.

Nancy nodded. "A month ago when we were over in Switzerland on that case, and we were on our way out of the country, Frank and I were..."

The cousins waited. George made impatient motioning gestures, but comprehension dawned with slow terrible brilliance in Bess's eyes. "Did something happen like on the train?"

Nancy looked down at the melting carton of ice cream, stuck the spoon in and put it on George's desk. She put her palms together and pressed them between her knees, looking down. "We were together. And now I'm pregnant."

After a beat she sipped in a breath and glanced up, looked back and forth between the two pairs of staring, shocked eyes. George was the first to recover. "But we were going up to see Ned today?"

"Have you told him? Or him? Either of them?" Bess asked. "And how was it?"

Nancy smiled faintly to herself and made a soft noise in her throat. "It wasn't at all like I thought it would be," she said. "I don't know. It wasn't very romantic. We'd been on the run for five hours. I was..." She shrugged. "Frank and I haven't talked since, and I haven't told him. I didn't know until the doctor-- told me--"

At that the first tear traced down her pale cheek, and Bess rushed over to put her arms around Nancy's softly trembling shoulders. "It's okay, it's okay."

Nancy shook her head. "It's not okay," she cried. "He loves Callie. He's always loved Callie. He didn't tell Callie about the train. He's with her. He loves her. The entire time, when we-- he didn't say he loved me."

"Nan," Bess murmured.

"I don't know what I'm going to do."

\--

By the time Nancy left George's house two hours later, she had her choices, puzzled over and elaborated by their shocked discussion. Go to Ned, tell him everything, see how he would respond. Go to Ned, tell him some things, wait to break the major news to him later. Go to Frank, do the same.

Go to neither of them. Wait.

In all the years they had known each other, all the moments they had shared, Frank and Nancy had never said the words that had been as comfortable between Nancy and Ned as breath. Infatuation and longing, that was the language they spoke.

Nancy sat in her idling car, staring at the phone on the passenger seat. If she waited a night to decide, she didn't know she would be when she woke up in her bed the next morning, the ways knowing would change her. Already it spread like a flush through her tired veins, the uncertainty and the fear.

She picked up the phone and placed her call.

"Hey."

"Hey," she said. "We need to talk."

"Go ahead," Frank replied.

\--

During the three months they had been planning their wedding, the three months and one day since she had given Frank the news, every week or so Nancy lay in her twin bed in her father's house and looked at the telephone, and the picture of Ned which stood on the other side of it. In the framed snapshot, he was smiling. Relaxed and easy. Looking at the picture made her remember his voice. Remembering his voice made her want to hear it.

When she put her hand on the phone, she had to fight the urge to sneak out of the house and smoke a cigarette.

She'd started smoking after her first conversation with Frank, after giving him the news. Just the one cigarette, just to calm her nerves, with no harm done. She'd continued once she figured out that even though he didn't love her, he was resigned to doing the right thing. Breaking up with Callie and announcing his engagement to Nancy, those were the right things. He had informed Carson of his intentions, he spent long weekends in River Heights pouring over wedding magazines with her. He took her on a weekend trip up to New York, to show her the house he wanted to rent. For them.

Some nights she was so lonely that the impulse to call Ned, just hear his voice, for just a moment, was almost impossible to resist.

Frank had said the words when he'd shown her the diamond solitaire, when he'd slid it onto her passive finger. He took her into his arms and murmured, with a somber tone that broke her heart, "I love you."

Despite herself she had remembered Ned's marriage proposal, half a lifetime ago, on a bridge over the river, after an expensive dinner and a dozen roses. She remembered his hands on hers and the warmth of his gaze. She remembered the thousands of times he'd told her he loved her. Snowball fights and camping trips, a hundred movies watched in her father's living room, dinners at his parents' house, parties at his frat. A million kisses and matching promises that she would never leave his side for long.

She let her palm rest on her belly. She had made her decision. She couldn't deny the physical attraction she did feel to Frank, she couldn't deny that they were friends, that everything about him was... that obviously... that they were having a baby together.

As the result of one hasty, spontaneous and, she almost couldn't even whisper it in the privacy of her own head, slightly disappointing night.

The night before her wedding to another man, she almost called Ned. Almost. She picked up the phone, the dial tone humming, her thumb resting over the first key. 

But she couldn't. She couldn't do it. She was afraid of what she would say, afraid of what she would hear coming out of her own mouth. Afraid of not knowing what the future would bring when she heard his voice, after five months of silence.

So she hung up the phone and snuck out of the house for one last cigarette before she went through with it. Swearing to herself that she'd do the right thing too, that she owed Frank that much. That she would not call Ned in the next twelve hours. She could last, she could make it.

If she didn't hear Ned's voice before that ring was on her finger, everything would be fine, she could do it.

Twenty-four hours later she was in a honeymoon suite looking down at the rings which marked her as Frank Hardy's wife.


	3. Chapter 3

Nancy clipped crossword puzzles out of the paper.

She clipped all the puzzles, crosswords and word jumbles and number games. She subscribed to free daily puzzles delivered via email. Sam had learned to walk clutching her mother's hand as they hunted up and down the narrow cramped aisles of the local used bookstore, between the shelves stacked high with foxed and dogeared mystery novels. Nancy watched crime procedurals and legal dramas, and had almost been sucked into a particularly twisty storyline of a soap opera, but had loosed herself of the addiction when the killer was revealed to be the heroine's twin sister, after a nasty bump on the head and through the suitably evil influence of her spurned suitor. She'd clicked on links and pop-up ads promising a private investigator's license through a fast and easy correspondence course a thousand times, but couldn't bring herself to do it.

Nancy was curled up in her favorite brown leather recliner, legs tucked up underneath her, a crossword puzzle in her lap, when Frank let himself in, tossed his keys on the hall table, and dragged a pair of suitcases into the living room.

"Hey," Nancy said, her eyes lighting.

"Hey," Frank said, his voice rough with exhaustion, but he bent to kiss her softly. Her eyes were still closed when he pulled back.

"How was your flight?"

Frank made a noncommittal noise and finished dragging his bags into their bedroom. "Long," he called. "Boring." He came back into the living room in stocking feet and swept Sam up, away from her blinking, buzzing toy. "Hey little girl," he said, and kissed his daughter. Nancy smiled at the scene.

"I ran into an old friend while you were gone."

"Oh?"

For the two Christmases she and Frank had celebrated as a married couple, Callie had sent cards to them. Nancy had found this year's card when she'd come home, after her unexpected encounter. From the look in Frank's eyes, the guarded half-frightened look, she could guess what he was thinking.

"Yeah, Ned was at our grocery store," she said. She laughed lightly, naturally. "Weird, huh?"

"Weird," Frank agreed, looking down at her. He took a seat near her on the couch and snagged the remote. "Does he live around here now?"

Nancy shook her head, her attention back on the puzzle. "Just on business."

Sam tired of her game and walked over to her father, raised grasping hands, and Frank smiled as he picked her up and planted her firmly on his lap. "I missed you guys."

"We missed you too."

After dinner, after Sam had been put to bed and had stopped talking to herself from behind their closed bedroom doors, Nancy stared up at the ceiling only once he had rolled out of her embrace and pulled his shorts back on. She could hear him, the soft smack of a fresh pack against the heel of his hand as the screen door swung open. She ran one hand over her face, through her hair, then leaned over the side of the bed and tugged her shirt back on.

She was still awake when he came back to bed. "I'm sorry I was gone for so long," he said. They rolled to the middle of the bed with the ease of long habit, into each other's arms, her forehead against his collarbone.

"You were only gone for a few minutes," she murmured into his chest, but she was smiling.

"I mean on the trip," he said. She felt him drop a kiss against her scalp. "Maybe tomorrow we can go look at houses. Something a little bigger, something closer to the city."

She made a soft approximation of a nod, her fingertips sliding down his bicep. "Okay," she whispered.

He kissed her temple, nestled against her. "Good," he murmured, and soon the three of them were asleep.

\--

They had a relaxed lunch at the kitchen table. Frank told her about his trip. Sam finished her meal, suffered her hands to be briskly toweled off by her mother, then made her way to her toy chest in a tireless effort to entirely empty it. Joe came over with Vanessa in tow, Joe see his niece and Vanessa to tag along on the house viewing.

Nancy watched them all chatter, her chin propped on the heel of her hand. She took up plates and loaded them into the dishwasher. She put a bright plastic cup of juice in Sam's grasping hands. She stood at the kitchen window and looked out at the dim patch of grass that had been their backyard for two years.

The pack of cigarettes was still unbroken in her purse.

She sighed and wiped her hands, passing the living room, where Joe had Sam in his arms, up above his head, and she was screaming with joy. Frank was smiling at something Vanessa was saying. The light caught on a bracelet circling her slender wrist. Joe swung Sam down to cradle her in the crook of his arm, in his lap, and she squirmed down to grab a book and bring it to him. His eyes lit up. Vanessa watched Joe help Sam back up into his lap and crack the book.

Nancy saw longing in Vanessa's glance and knew her presence on their trip wasn't entirely innocent.

The pills had started as mild post-partum antidepressants. Frank had honestly tried to limit his travel just after their marriage and after the birth of their daughter, but could not manage to stop it completely. He was catching planes out of the country while she lay with one ear cocked and one eye half-open in the night, waiting for Sam to wail from the bassinet beside the bed. The doctor was very understanding and the insurance covered the pills and she kept them in a bottle marked Extra-Strength Midol with a red X in magic marker on the cap. The incriminating orange bottles had never actually made it all the way home. She took one in the morning, just as she had taken birth control before her doctor had mentioned the seasonal injection and she had reported for that as soon as she could, sleeve rolled up, arm bared and ready.

Nancy did not hate her life. She could, and did, chat pleasantly with the neighbors and the grocer and the deliveryman who brought her husband's latest assignments. She went jogging every morning. She loved Sam with every bit of her being and she loved Frank and, despite some initial friction, her relationship with her father had never been stronger.

The pills just served to cloak the thin sharp blade beneath layers of velvet. When she saw Frank's name in Callie's handwriting. When Frank, as he had at lunch and with no sense of irony, launched into a detailed description of the meeting he'd held with a very valued and deeply underground informant, a high-ranking member of a rival government. When she turned over and the bed was empty. When she saw the inconsistencies in a television show because she'd been on the other side, had taken the fingerprints or recognized the wiretaps or traced someone's movements the very same way. When she felt the choked wordless desperation of the life she'd given up for the sake of that night.

Then she took one and looked down at Sam, and knew that her life had been worth something, even if she so rarely felt it would achieve anything else.

The house Nancy fell in love with was on a lake, in what was otherwise a cookie-cutter subdivision a few miles closer to the city and the airport and what served as the rest of her husband's life. A stained generous redwood deck out back and a view of the water, carpeted staircase and a kitchen with a pantry and no landlord inspecting the crawlspace or demanding a rent check. Nancy and Sam stood at the very edge of the backyard, the wind whipping at their strawberry blonde hair, as Frank and Joe talked to the realtor and Vanessa lingered in the sunken living room. Sam put her hand on the chain-link fence, then looked up at her mother.

"Let's go out," Nancy said, lifting Sam into her arms.

They stood on the shore until Nancy was shivering slightly and Sam was half-asleep and heavy on her shoulder. Then Frank walked up, touched her back gently, and she turned around.

"It can be ours in a month. If you want it."

The realtor stood, expectant, on the deck. Vanessa linked her arm through Joe's and murmured something into his ear. Frank had his hands in his pockets. Sam blinked sleepily at him.

"Yes," Nancy said.

\--

When Frank was gone for a week or longer, Nancy stayed with someone or had someone come stay with her. This time she had booked two tickets on a flight to Chicago and then the train to River Heights. Their Christmas was scheduled with her in-laws and she wanted to get in some time with her father and her friends before, because opportunities were all too likely to slip away in the dead months after.

Carson was watching Sam when Nancy, Bess, and George fought their way through the crowd after a concert in downtown Chicago. Bess snuggled deeper into her coat, grimacing at the cold. George perched on the edge of the sidewalk, arm half-raised for a taxi, then shot a questioning glance back at her two friends.

Nancy shook her head. "Can we grab a drink somewhere?"

Bess glanced down at their outfits. George was in a sleek plum gown, her dark hair close-cropped around her face. Nancy wore a black velvet bodice over a midnight-blue metallic satin skirt which whipped just over her slender ankles. Bess was in muted flame and high heels, her hair in smooth, practiced curls.

She pursed her lips, and smiled. "I know just the place."

Two blocks and ten minutes later they were seated in the noisy polished bar, nodding and smiling as the bartender delivered their first drinks. Bess picked the cherry out of her Mai Tai and bit it off the stem, then swirled the drink with her straw. George toyed with the double shot she'd ordered.

"I'm sorry I won't be here for Christmas this year," Nancy said, considering her martini, her fingertips resting lightly just below the chilled lip of the glass. She slipped her hand into the pocket of her coat and smacked the new pack against the heel of her hand, unwrapped it, and accepted the light the bartender gave her. She exhaled with her eyes closed, her right elbow propped up on the bar, smoke trailing from between her fingers.

"Me too," Bess said. "Something always seems to happen when you're around."

Nancy took another drag and smiled. "How's life been, George?"

George was answering when the door swung open and the brisk wind swept over them again. Nancy took a sip of her drink, nodding in encouragement, and she saw Bess freeze suddenly, so quick she nearly didn't catch it, her gaze locked on something in the mirror hanging at the back of the bar.

"Excuse me, could I get a Heineken?"

George had stopped midsentence and was staring at the guy who had stepped to the bar. The bartender uncapped a beer and handed it to the man, and Nancy's gaze traced up the green bottle, to the hand, the black sleeve, the full shoulder, the face.

"Fancy meeting you here," Ned said, when their eyes met.

\--

"He has a girlfriend," Nancy repeated thickly, collapsing to George's couch. She tugged her heels off and tossed them in the general direction of the front door. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Just one," George said, wrinkling her nose in distaste, as she fell with familiar grace into the armchair. "Bess, do I have any coolers?"

Bess walked into the living room on stocking feet, handed out three capped coolers and bummed a cigarette out of Nancy's pack, which they lit from the same match. Nancy waved it in the air, slowly, and it faded.

"Hey, that's two," George protested.

Bess exhaled her first drag. "I need it," she said simply. "Did you _see_ who he was with?"

"I bet she's a ballerina," Nancy snarled, pulling at the cap. "I can't get this damn thing open."

Bess took it from her and tried to twist it open, then handed it to George, who had already finished half of hers. George opened it easily, then walked with slow deliberation up to the stereo, which she flipped on. "I'm gonna go put on some jeans or something," she said, making a slow dismissive gesture, then vanished into her bedroom.

Bess shook her head and took another swig from her cooler. "It's been ages since I've seen Ned. That was so weird."

Nancy rested her head against the back of the couch, her eyes closed, elbow propped on the arm and smoke wafting from between her fingers. "Yeah," she mumbled. "He was at our grocery store. He was there. He didn't say a word about having a girlfriend."

Bess propped herself up with some effort. "What?" she asked, struggling to focus on Nancy. Between the three of them they had run up a serious bar tab, especially once Ned's girlfriend had arrived, tanned and enameled and petite, all big innocent green eyes and lacquered fingernails against Ned's sleeve as she'd tucked her arm through his. Dark brown hair streaked blonde.

She'd looked possessive. Nancy had simply stared, her cigarette turning to ash in her motionless hand.

"He was-- me and Sam, we were at the grocery store," Nancy said, tossing her arm up, elbow crooked over her eyes. "And Ned, he came out of nowhere. We said hi. He said, he said hi to Sam."

Bess gently pulled Nancy's arm away from her eyes. "Nan."

George walked across the room on bare feet, her face freshly scrubbed, in an oversized sweater and cuffed jeans. "Okay," George said, downing the rest of her cooler in one sip. "Ned has a girlfriend. So what? You have a husband."

"Yeah," Nancy agreed quietly. "I do."

Three hours later the cousins were asleep and Nancy was in one of George's t-shirts, staring up at the ceiling fan. Once the motion made her dizzy she put her arm over her face. Her foot was tapping nervously against the arm of the couch.

She needed another cigarette.

She tossed the quilt off and walked into the kitchen, pulled her trench coat on. George's apartment looked out over a normally busy street, now deserted in the blue-black hours before dawn. She pulled her cigarettes out of her pocket.

A rectangle of white cardstock fell out with it.

Nancy lit her cigarette and put out the match, then bent over to pick it up. She couldn't remember anyone giving her a business card...

_Edmund C. Nickerson_, she read, running her thumbnail over the heavy black embossed letters. Phone number, fax number, email address.

She flipped it over and saw a cell number, in Ned's handwriting. Thick black script, Chicago area code.

She put it back in her pocket, slowly.


	4. Chapter 4

Fenton and Laura Hardy loved their granddaughter. They were seated close together on the couch, bent over, watching her. Sam was in the middle of their living room, surrounded by piles of crumpled wrapping paper and shiny new toys. Nancy called out her name and Sam turned in time to see the flash on the camera, smiling up at her mother, the Christmas tree blinking slowly in the background.

Over dinner Nancy fed Sam, making sure her food was sliced small, finding her juice. Frank was making wide arm movements and describing something Nancy hadn't seen. She chimed in when the table responded with laughter, without knowing why, without hearing.

Joe was across the table, next to Vanessa. From the way Frank's parents kept glancing between the two of them, Nancy was expecting Joe to stand and tap his water glass, interrupting his older brother, and announce that he and Vanessa had set a date and bought a ring, but that shoe never dropped. Nancy found herself staring down at Sam's empty plate, hastily wiping her hands before she toddled off into the living room again, bringing destruction and chaos in her wake.

"So when do you two move to the new place?"

Frank glanced over at Nancy, smiling. "Two weeks."

Nancy returned it and glanced over at Sam. She had picked up a crumpled sheet of wrapping paper and was flapping it over her head.

"Laura, did you say you needed some milk?" she found herself asking.

Nancy didn't even pull out her cell phone until she was on the way back from the grocery store. She had looked at the business card so many times that she had the number memorized, could see his handwriting when she closed her eyes. She punched it in and held her breath, counting the burred faint rings, waiting for his voicemail to pick up.

But Ned's voice came over the line, rich and tinged with laughter, and she jerked the steering wheel hard to the right and pulled off into a deserted parking lot, on Christmas day, staring out at dead winter fields with her phone pressed against her cheek.

"Merry Christmas, Nan."

"Merry Christmas to you," she said, and her hand was trembling as she shifted the car into park, twisted the keys toward her and sat in silence. The cold metal ring hanging from the key brushed against her knee.

"So you found the card I left in your pocket."

"I did," she said. She traced her fingers down the steering wheel. "I'm really sorry. You're probably with your family."

"It's fine," he said. "It's nice to hear from you."

She squeezed her eyes shut, hard. Her breath was fogging in the air and the milk was slowly warming on the passenger seat. "It's nice to talk to you. I was... I was wondering. I don't know when I'll be in River Heights again."

She had been able to hear music and laughter behind his voice. Now it was all quiet, over the brushed hum of the wind. He was outside too, alone, apologetic smile, hand probably shoved into his pocket.

After a long pause he finally spoke, hesitant. "I'm going to be at the airport, near you," he said. "The morning of New Year's Eve. I'll have a few hours to kill."

"Okay," she said.

\--

Frank was making dinner. Making in the sense that he had taken the ground beef she had bought, smacked it loosely into patties, and slapped it on the indoor grill, sipping a beer. Nancy made the fries, warmed the hamburger rolls, sliced the tomato, set the table. She had already started packing up the nonessentials in the kitchen, along with the summer clothes and the wildly assorted sports equipment they had managed to assemble. Sam had fallen asleep on the couch in front of the television watching a cartoon and Nancy switched it off, watching as Sam scowled in her sleep, an echo of her father's expression. Sam had also managed to, before passing out, unpack half a box of her less favorite toys. Nancy sighed and swept them back in, securing it with tape before she rejoined her husband in the kitchen.

"So what are we doing for New Year's?"

She recognized his expression even before he turned to her. "I'm really sorry, babe."

She bowed her head. Her heart was pounding. "How long this time?"

"Just under a week," he said. "Sooner, I hope."

She nodded. "I thought you were going to talk to them about being a desk jockey," she said.

He smiled, and she read in his face what she herself had thought, before. Only once she couldn't run after a suspect would she allow herself to be chained to an office building, a telephone, a time clock. He had always felt the same.

But he was the one who could leave.

\--

Nancy woke and immediately rolled out of bed, padded to the kitchen in her socks and poured a glass of juice, as she did every morning. She shook the marked pill bottle she'd swiped from the bathroom on the way. Lined up the arrows and popped it with her thumbnail.

Sam was coming with them. Sam would be their chaperone.

Nancy shook the bottle over her open palm. Half-empty. Usually she put the pill on the back of her tongue, washed it down with the juice, dressed and woke Sam, like every morning.

Nancy tilted her palm up and let the pills slide back into the bottle, capped it. The pills weren't like birth control and skipping a day wouldn't hurt.

She finished her juice, woke Sam and dressed her. She spread all her makeup on the counter, lipsticks Bess had recommended and foundation she hadn't used since high school. Sam, curious, swiped a shiny bottle of mascara, and Nancy laughed as her daughter tried to pry it open, finally wailing in defeat and frustration.

"No, honey, that's what your Aunt Bess is for," she told Sam, picking her up. "You're right, though, why bother with all this makeup when it's just breakfast."

Ned had a newspaper in his hands, coat on but unbuttoned, waiting in the unspeakable din at the entrance of the pancake house. He smiled when he saw them, both of them, Sam's hand securely in hers as Nancy walked up to him. When Ned looked at her, Sam gave him a shy smile and hid behind Nancy's leg.

"I'm sorry I got you out of bed so early," he said by way of greeting.

Nancy shrugged. "Pick a more convenient layover next time," she told him, softening her words with a smile.

He nodded. "I think they have our table ready."

Sam was the perfect icebreaker. The waitress cooed over her and gave her a set of crayons with her paper placemat. While the two of them spoke very generally about their lives and what they had done since, Sam would alternately stare, entirely unselfconsciously, at Ned, or color vigorously, often leaving streaks on the tabletop. Nancy lingered over her coffee and a bowl of fresh fruit, while Ned put away most of a huge stack of pancakes, obliging when Sam made grabbing gestures in his direction with a bite of syrup-dampened pancake. Sam tried it and squealed happily.

"Great, now I'll never get her down for her nap," Nancy said, smiling.

Ned ran a hand over Sam's hair and she ducked away from him, giggling. "Much as I hate to admit it, she's beautiful," he said, then looked back at Nancy.

"She is my life," Nancy replied simply.

Ned's mouth half quirked in a smile and he ducked his head. "Yeah," he said softly. "Must be nice."

"Does your girlfriend not want to have kids?"

The expression on Ned's face after that question would have been unreadable to almost anyone else, but Nancy had the answer she was looking for before he opened his mouth. "I'm not seeing her anymore, actually," Ned replied. "Just met someone else, though." He shrugged.

The sun caught the facets in the diamond on her finger and the wall was momentarily awash with the reflection. "Keep trying," she told him. "You'll find someone."

"I keep hoping," he said, and his smile was bittersweet. Sam helpfully threw all of her silverware onto the floor just then, and Nancy was able to signal for the waitress instead of avoiding his eyes.

After a promise that they would meet again the next time he was in town ("Soon," he assured her, and despite her declining spirits she believed him), they climbed into separate cabs. Nancy strapped Sam in and found a napkin in her purse, wiped her daughter's chin as she gave him the address.

The cabbie had put a no smoking sign up in the back. Nancy didn't smoke around Sam anyway, but the urge was strong. She didn't believe him, that he would let her know when he was in town again, but she still had his number. Her momentary insanity had been staved, her wild impulse to call him finally satisfied after almost three years of waiting. He was not so much changed. Still the guy she remembered. But there was distance between them now, distance she had helped create and maintain.

It was enough to know he was there, that she could still call. But she probably never would again. Between them was too much of everything, too much had changed, too much time passed, too much history, and too much awareness that what they had been, they would never be again. Too much for her to overcome. She would keep the warmth she had felt on seeing him, and she would close the book, at last.

When they finally arrived she paid the cabbie with a generous tip and he came around to help her wrestle the carseat onto the pavement. Sam smiled up at Nancy, their hands joined.

"How about we," Nancy began, then trailed off.

The door of their house was half-open.

After five seconds' deliberation Nancy turned and knocked on the cabbie's window. "Wait just a minute," she asked him. "I might need you to take me somewhere else."

Nancy swept Sam up into her arms and approached the house, slow, quiet. She had locked the door, she always locked the door. It was half-open, her eyes hadn't deceived her with a trick of light or shadow. The boxes she had begun packing were slashed open, strewn over the living room floor.

Nancy put her other arm around Sam and walked quickly back to the cab, where the driver waited, his meter ticking. "I need to go to the airport," she told him. "As fast as you can make it."

\--

There was protocol, of course.

Nancy called the local police station from her cell phone and explained that her house had been broken into and that she strongly recommended at least bomb-sniffing dogs on the detail sent out on the call. She called the number Frank had made her memorize in case of emergencies, talked to half a dozen bland passionless voices before one consented to take her message. She called the cell phone number he had given her for his trips abroad and left him a voicemail on that. She called her in-laws.

Then she called Ned.

"Lucky you caught me, I was about to turn this off," Ned said. "What's up?"

"I'm almost at the airport," she said. "I need you to wait for me."

"Sure," he said, with no question, no hesitation. "I'll be at the front doors."

Nancy hung up and watched her fingers tremble slightly against her knee. She glared at the no smoking sign. Sam whined in the car seat for a toy, and Nancy handed her a ragged doll she found in the bag. When Sam began chirping happily to herself, Nancy stared out the window, her pulse high and hard. Glancing behind her every few seconds, looking for aggressive drivers, vaguely familiar cars.

He was as good as his word. He came around and Nancy handed Sam over to him. Sam was upset for a minute, but calmed down as Nancy pulled her bag and the car seat out of the cab.

"Thanks," Nancy said, and he trailed behind her as she ran into the terminal.

"Nan, what's going on," he said, looking over at Sam, who had looped her arm around his neck and was heavy on his shoulder.

"I need-- I--"

He looped his hand around her wrist and pulled her up short. "Why are you here."

"I need to," she said, and she looked at Sam, brushed Sam's hair back, her fingers trembling. "They were in our house. They broke into our house. We could have been there. I need to get somewhere safe, I need to get her somewhere safe. I need to get to Bayport. Until Frank gets home. I need to get away from here. They could be following us. They could have had Sam. They could have." Her breath was shallow, and he curved an arm around her waist and held her up when her knees began to fail her.

"I'm coming with you."

She looked at him, actually focused on him, for the first time since she had walked into the airport. "Just make sure we get on the plane okay."

He shook his head. "Come on, right now."

She smiled then, despite herself, but her smile faded quickly and the longing for a cigarette was almost impossible to resist, as they stood in line waiting, waiting for tickets, for the plane to board. She had no idea who she was looking for. No idea who among them could be working with the wrong people. Sam fell asleep across Ned's lap, his hand on her back, but Nancy still couldn't stop touching Sam, resting her fingertips across her daughter's red-gold hair, thanking God she was alive.

"Weren't you going somewhere?"

His smile held no humor. "It can wait," he said. "For this."

His frequent flyer miles bought them two first-class seats, adjoining, and Nancy sat at the window, her daughter on her lap. Ned wasn't relaxed. He watched every passenger intently, memorizing faces, calculating risk. The way she'd taught him.

"Do you remember the last thing I said to you," he said. "Before."

She smiled, even though her heart was sinking, even though the steel in his voice bit into her. "You said you needed time," she recited from memory. "Time and space. To figure out what was going to happen."

He nodded, still not looking at her. "Why didn't you tell me. Why did I have to read about it in the paper."

She looked down. "Maybe... there are some words so terrible you can't say," she whispered. Sam stirred in her sleep and Nancy let her palm rest on her daughter's cheek.

"Well," he said softly. "Rest, you need it."

She did manage to sleep. Once the adrenaline wore off she felt numb, exhausted, waking every few minutes, when Sam moved or when she remembered. Once she woke and found that she had, in her sleep, rested her head against Ned's shoulder. She pulled away from him, startled, embarrassed.

"It's okay," he said. "Go back to sleep."

She laid her head back on his shoulder, her eyes fluttering closed. A flight attendant had been smiling in their direction. To anyone else, they were a family, a protective father and his two girls.

A tear slipped down Nancy's cheek and she swiped it away, blaming it on her frayed nerves.

Ned was as good as his word. Fenton was waiting in the airport lobby for Nancy, his forehead creased with worry. When she arrived, Fenton rushed to her and took his granddaughter, and only then did Ned step back, leaving Nancy and her daughter outside his armspan, outside the sphere of his protection.

Nancy gestured for Fenton to wait, then went back to Ned. "Thank you," she murmured, her voice low. "I mean it. You didn't have to do this, but I appreciate it."

He ducked his head. "Don't mention it."

"Ned..."

He did meet her eyes then, and shook his head. "It's all right," he said. "We're friends. You'd do the same for me."

"Yeah."

He sighed. Finally he said, "Be safe."

"I will," she told him, and he was the first to walk away.

The car ride to Fenton and Laura's was a blur. Sam was fussy, angry that their schedule had been disrupted, angry that she'd had to be on a plane and she wasn't in her own room at home and most of all that she didn't have any juice or a blanket. Laura was prepared with both, but the furrows between Sam's eyebrows, the Hardy expression of anger, still stayed on her face. Nancy left Sam downstairs, once the protective detail had come to the house. Fenton was taking no chances with his granddaughter. She went into Frank's old room and climbed up onto the bed, in her socks, looking down at the violet button-down and charcoal slacks she had picked out a lifetime ago, when the only plans for her day had been breakfast with Ned and a bottle of wine at midnight.

Her cell phone rang and she picked it up. "Frank."

"What happened," he asked.

"They broke into our house," she said. "I don't know who. I was out at breakfast, thank God. Who have you pissed off?"

He exhaled, explosively. "Where are you now?"

"I'm at your parents' house," she said. "I got on a plane as soon as I could. Tell me you're coming home soon."

"I will," he said. "I promise. But, you're safe."

"We are," she said. "Frank, if we'd been home..."

"It's okay, it's gonna be okay. I love you."

After their conversation ended Nancy flipped her phone closed and tossed it onto the carpet, then turned over and buried her face in the pillow. She was shaking. The sentence kept starting in her head but never finished. If they had been home. If she and Sam had been home.

She heard the door open and turned over to see Laura standing there, Sam toddling up to the bed, much happier. Nancy pulled her daughter up with her and Sam snuggled against her. Nancy brushed a hand over her own face, smiling faintly at Laura's concerned expression.

"It doesn't look like anyone followed you," Laura said. "But they're going to stay around until you say."

Nancy nodded. "Thank you," she said.

"Anytime," Laura replied. "Hey, maybe between the three of us we'll be able to keep Fenton awake until midnight."

No kiss to ring in the new year. Not this time.

Nancy smiled at her mother in law. "We can try."


	5. Chapter 5

"What's this?" Frank was shaking the bottle of Midol with the red X on the cap.

Nancy looked over at him, her mind racing. "Just some old pills."

Sam was unpacking her own room, which just meant taking a toy out of a box, playing with it for a few minutes, and then unceremoniously dumping it onto the floor as she picked out something else. Nancy was going to go behind her, but after lunch, maybe after a nap.

"Why'd you save them?" Frank asked.

"Habit," Nancy replied.

Frank peered at the expiration date. "They're out of date," he said. "I'm going to toss them, if you don't mind." He smiled at her.

Nancy shrugged. "That's fine," she told him, smiling back, ducking into another box.

They'd had an argument, once he'd returned to find the two of them at his parents' house. She had never been so angry toward him. He protested, when she tried to make him see what could have happened, that it hadn't. That she and Sam were fine. They would be more careful, they would have a better security system installed, he would pay whatever would make her feel better, but it would be all right. He was just glad they were safe.

For him, the argument had ended that night when he had turned to her, reassuring, and she had accepted his embrace.

He tossed the pills at the already overflowing trash can.

She knew what his reassurances had meant. He hadn't been away from the two of them for more than a few hours at a time since, but he would leave again. Just a question of when.

\--

"You made it back okay."

"We did," she said. "We're in a new house now. He had a moving company go in and get everything, so I didn't even have to walk back in."

"That was nice of him." Ned's voice was expressionless.

"He's going out of town again," Nancy said. "So we're coming to River Heights for a little while."

"Oh."

Nancy sighed. The frustration she had felt at their last conversation, the frustration when she couldn't smack Frank when he went through his long speech about how it was very important and he was the only one who could go to Mozambique and it would only be for a few days and lives were at stake, began to boil over. She hated being on the other end of the speech she herself had given so many times. She hated feeling powerless and useless, and alone. Looking back, she was surprised Ned had taken it so well. But even then, she'd never heard him like this.

"You're mad at me, aren't you."

"I'm not mad. I just want you to be safe."

"We are," she said. "Thanks to you."

"It was nothing," he said, and she counted her breaths, waiting. "Maybe we'll run into each other."

"Maybe."

The wind was blowing ripples on the lake. Frank was putting Sam to bed upstairs. Nancy flipped her phone closed and wondered why he'd answered, why she hadn't heard the muted laughter and gentle chime of a restaurant, some other streaked brunette pointedly clearing her throat somewhere beyond him.

The sliding door opened and Frank came up behind her, put his arms around her waist. "Everything settled? I wish I didn't have to leave."

"Everything's settled," she told him, but she wondered and hated herself for it. He was only leaving because he had to, same as she always had. They were the same. If things had been different, she might be the one sitting up late, going over the case, exhilarated by the prospect of another problem to solve. Maybe even with him.

"We used to have so much fun together," she whispered, leaning against his shoulder. "I loved every second I spent with you."

He squeezed her gently. "I still do," he said.

\--

"You're the sweetest little girl I've ever met," Bess knelt and told Sam. She glanced up at Nancy. "And I babysat a lot of kids."

Nancy nodded seriously at her daughter. "She did," Nancy said. "So you must be good."

"You like ice cream?" she asked Sam, whose eyes lit up.

Sam was leaning over the ice cream counter, in Nancy's arms, studying the tubs intently. Bess let out a laugh. "Checked your mail lately?"

"Why?" Nancy asked, as Sam braced herself on flat palms, her breath fogging on the glass.

"Wendy's decided to throw another reunion party this summer. Not at the beach house, though. She's going the conventional route. Hotel ballroom and open bar, and Patrick's not invited."

Nancy smiled, remembering the last reunion Wendy had thrown. Ned had been her date then, and Wendy had been one of Patrick's many targets. "He's still locked up, right?"

"Of course," Bess rolled her eyes. "There's no way she would even have thought about it otherwise."

"Hmm," Nancy said. "I'll have to see if Dad got any mail for me. I don't think anyone else has my address, except you guys."

"Yeah, you did your best to drop off the face of the earth," Bess said. "Sam, what did you want?"

"She wants chocolate and sprinkles," Nancy replied. "Like always."

\--

Ned had to have been waiting, not leaving this meeting to chance. When she brought the running stroller out in the morning, he jogged by her father's house in sweats.

"You planning to kill me and collect the insurance money?" she called out to him, smiling.

He smiled back. "Not yet," he said. "Don't cross me, though."

They jogged together, falling into the same familiar wordless rhythm. He slowed to keep with her as she pushed the stroller. Sam craned around to look at him, then yanked back in, giggling. Nancy followed his lead to the park, and when they stopped for a breather they were just outside. He raised his eyebrows and Nancy followed him in, their sneakers crunching against the frozen winter grass. The sky overhead was dim and dull, glaring, but she had bundled her daughter up against the cold.

"So nothing else has happened? No suspicious characters hanging around?"

Nancy nodded. "But, I still... I just hope that when we go back, they won't have wrecked the house I just finished putting in order."

He looked over at her, then, rubbing his mittens together. "I worry about you."

Nancy smiled, speechless, and when Sam made a frustrated noise Nancy turned the stroller around to face them. Sam looked back and forth between Nancy and Ned, then started to work on taking her mittens off.

"That's what friends do."

He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. She was almost afraid to meet his gaze. "I don't think we should," he began, then looked down at his bare, paled hands. She saw his jaw working under his skin.

"That we should be friends anymore?" she finished, blaming the wind for the sudden tears stinging her eyes.

"That we should see each other anymore," he finished, slowly. "I think emails would be, would be good. For a while."

"Until when?"

He shrugged. "It's all so sudden," he said. "I don't see you or hear from you in close to three years, and then you're back, and..."

"I understand," she murmured. "I-- I kind of felt the same way. So much has changed, and, and I do want to be your friend. If we can. But." She sighed.

Sam had taken her mitten off and was offering it to Ned, tentatively. He took it in his hand, the tiny pink wool swallowed by his palm.

"I'll still worry about you," he murmured. "I just." He laughed to himself, under his breath. "I just need some space."

"It's okay," she said, rubbing the edge of her mittened hand over her eyes. "I don't blame you. It was too soon."

They began the trek back to the house, the wind biting through the edges of her coat, the line of skin between the cuffs and her mittens, but the closer they came, the slower she found herself going, the slower he was going. Sam cried out in anger as the first slow series of drops fell from the sky.

"Let me just," she said, and Ned stood just inside the doorway of the quiet, empty house as Nancy freed Sam from her stroller and coat. When she looked back at the doorway, it was empty; he was gone.

She walked out onto the porch and Ned looked over his shoulder at her. He was nearly at the edge of the yard, but the lock of their eyes stilled him. He turned around to face her.

"It's just too hard for me," he said, through the space between them, his hair and shoulders darkening under the rain. "I thought I could stand it, but I can't."

Nancy closed the screen and came to the edge of the steps, the freezing rain falling on her bare face, and under his gaze she felt like her entire body was shaking, just under her chilled skin. "I never meant to hurt you."

He ran his hands through his hair, slicked it back. "So when I said I needed some time, you decided to give me all the time I needed."

Nancy sat down on the front steps, watching his chest rise and fall, in angry puffed breath. "The day I found out..." She closed her eyes. "I was on my way to see you when I found out I was pregnant with her."

"To tell me about your decision?" His eyes were blazing.

"To tell you that I wanted to be with you," she said. Her breath caught in her chest. "That you were the one I wanted. Not him. Ned, I never meant for this to happen."

"You never meant to sleep with him." Ned was looking over her shoulder, at Sam, who had come to stand at the screen door, watching them.

Nancy buried her face in her hands. "I didn't know how to tell you," she mumbled. "So I didn't."

Sam made an impatient noise behind her, and she glanced over her shoulder, at her daughter, her eyes red-rimmed, mouthing some appeasement. The furrow was between her eyebrows again.

Ned shook his head. "I thought you'd decided to be with him. And then, I saw the announcement in the paper..." The sky opened up above them, drenching her tennis shoes, her knees, but Ned remained on the lawn, gazing at her, his expression almost impossible to bear. "And I must be a fool, because seeing you even now, it hurts too much."

Nancy walked out to him, then, the cold soaking through to her skin, her heart breaking. "You must hate me."

Ned shook his head, forced the words out. "I hate the fact that you're with him. But I can't hate you, no matter how much I try. I can't look at you without remembering. Without... we need to stay away from each other, Nan. Until."

"Until when?"

"Until I can stop feeling this way about you."

When she finally found the strength to lift her head, soaked to the skin, her face flushed with tears, he was gone, and she was standing on her father's lawn alone.


	6. Chapter 6

"What are you wearing to the reunion?"

Nancy was flipping through hangers in her closet. "I don't know," she told Bess.

"You know you have to pick something awesome," Bess told her. "It's tradition. I bet no one will be able to tell you had a baby if they didn't already know." She sighed in jealousy.

"Maybe I'll go out and buy something new," Nancy mused. "What do you think, something in silver with feathers?"

"Now you're just mocking me," Bess said. "And Frank's coming, right?"

Nancy looked over at their empty, unmade bed. Frank was downstairs playing with Sam; she could hear their mingled laughter. "Probably," she said dryly.

"I thought you said for sure."

Nancy shrugged, closing her eyes, her shoulders tight. "There's something that might come up and he swears he's going to try to get out of it. He swears."

Bess heaved a sigh. "Then he won't," she replied.

"I know," Nancy said. "You found a date yet?"

At their change in topic, Bess perked up. "I met this super cute guy at my gym. What do you think, a month should be long enough to wrangle him into going, right?"

"Sure," Nancy said. "Have you gone out on a date with him yet?"

"No," Bess admitted, and Nancy had to laugh.

\--

Sam loved the warm weather.

When they went out for Nancy's morning jog, Sam loved to tug off her sunhat and bask in the warmth, chattering happily at the birds, other children, other joggers. Nancy jogged into a park and spread a blanket on the grass, took Sam out of the stroller and gave her a cup of juice.

"You're my favorite," she told Sam. "My big girl."

Sam grinned at her mother, trailing her fingers through a bowl of cheerios.

"You think maybe we can talk your dad into a picnic today?"

Sam raised guileless blue eyes to her mother's and Nancy sighed, her chin cupped in her palm, sweat drying cool on her skin. "Yeah, who knows," she said, then reached over and brushed Sam's hair back off her forehead.

She could see couples. Couples walking dogs, throwing frisbees, sprawled out on the grass. She looked down at her daughter. She and Frank hadn't been jogging together, not in a long time. At first because she was pregnant, and then because the baby was too small to be left alone or tossed about in a stroller, and then because their schedules were incompatible and he was gone eighteen of every thirty days. She felt like they were in the middle of a conversation that never ended. There was no closure. There was nothing when he could walk out the door given five minutes' warning.

He'd been enthusiastic about going to the reunion with her, at first. But the longest plans they had ever made together hadn't been plans at all, they had been Sam, who was theirs for eighteen years or until college, whichever came first. She could never pin him down. Not anymore. He paid the house and car payments on time and his checks faithfully appeared in their joint bank account on schedule and that was exactly as much as she could expect from him. No more, no less.

Sam offered her a cheerio and Nancy took it.

\--

Frank bought her roses the day he knew for certain that he would be unable to join her. She took them and smiled at him, and he returned it, relieved.

She had been near her pharmacy earlier in the day. Had even gone inside, browsing the aisles. She walked out with a pack of gum instead of a pill refill. She was determined that she would have a good day, without medication or alcohol or any of the usual crutches. She'd even thrown out her pack of cigarettes.

"I'm really sorry," he said, his gaze still warily searching hers.

She smiled, and it was faint, but genuine. "It's all right," she said. "Next time."

He nodded, even while she thought that he would just find somewhere else to go, someone...

She shook her head briskly and moved to clear their dinner from the table. "How about a movie?" she suggested. "It's been a while since we just... relaxed."

"You're not mad?"

"No," she said lightly. "Now help me clear up."

After the movie and after Sam was asleep, she accepted his advances, as she nearly always did. He went outside as he nearly always did and Nancy curled up, on her side, toward the window, staring out into the dark. She was blank. She could smell the perfume of the roses above his scent on her skin.

Then he was back in bed and she curled up against his chest and breathed in, kept breathing in, until the smell of the smoke overwhelmed everything else. He rubbed his palm over her back in slow circles. "You're the best," he told her.

She smiled. "I know."

He slept and her eyelashes brushed against his shirt and she felt nothing.

In the morning he went to the office and she was going through her closet after her shower, looking for a skirt, when she found a dress she hadn't worn in a while. She pulled it out and smiled at it.

Even if she wouldn't be hanging on her husband's arm, she could still look good.

\--

Frank called before he boarded the plane, and she promised him that she would limit herself to one drink and would try not to be too breathtakingly gorgeous, without him. Nancy hung up the phone laughing and looked over at her father, who was on the floor playing with Sam.

"I was thinking maybe we could do something tonight," Carson said. "It's been a while since we've spent some time together."

She smiled at him. "All of us? Even Sam?"

"Well," Carson said, looking down at his granddaughter, who was thrusting a faded wooden block, a relic from Nancy's childhood, up at him. "She can eat on her own, right?"

Nancy relaxed, talking to her father. After dinner in a soft expensive restaurant they lingered with cups of coffee and she fell into the same quiet lull she'd felt when he'd told her about his cases, when she had been a teenager and he had been the world to her. It was only when she chimed in, anticipating his argument about his client's not being advised of his Miranda rights, that the familiar, bitter anger began to put an edge on her words.

Carson put down his spoon. "You okay?"

Nancy twisted her engagement ring around on her finger. "Fine," she told him. "I'm-- I'm sure it's like this for everyone. Hannah staying home with me while you went off to the office."

"Well, your mother," Carson said quietly. "She took you with her everywhere she went. Strapped to her back, her little Indian baby. And I think you turned out all the better for it."

He smiled and she smiled and when their conversation continued she stopped listening to the nasty voice inside her head, and after a while, it stopped as well.

Sam was loudly protesting her bedtime as Nancy curled up with her feet tucked under her on the couch, in her father's living room, and the haze she had been under was lifting. Her father was in his study, finishing up a few last-minute papers before joining her. Nancy pulled her rings up to the next joint of her finger and rubbed the pale skin, distracted, before sliding them back firmly.

Her father wouldn't come into the room with that apologetic look on his face and tell her that he had to go.

Nancy ran her hand through her hair. Oh, there had been plenty of that, but there had been warning, and Hannah, and Bess and George. When her father went on a business trip or was spending all his time in his law library, he was the distance of a phone call away, willing to drop everything and come to her if she needed him, and she wasn't alone. When she was in New York she was a cipher of herself, Sam's mother and Frank's wife and not Nancy anymore, and help was no longer the distance of a phone call away but the distance of plane tickets and time zones.

"Now," Carson said, smiling when he walked back in. "You pick."

Sam had tired out and Nancy nestled against an arm of the couch with the remote in her hand, watching her father curl up in his favorite armchair, prop his feet up, and settle in. She smiled. She'd missed it. She'd missed seeing her father this way, a way Sam would probably never see her own father. She reached up and rubbed the sudden tears away before Carson could see them, blaming the fragility of several months gone without her medication.

"You sure you don't want some hot chocolate? I wrestled Hannah's secret recipe out of her."

She was on her second mug of warm milk and they sat in silence, watching television. If her conversation with Frank never had an end, nor did the conversation she had with her father, but it was because they were beyond words now. She could tell by his glances that he knew something was wrong but he was going to wait for her to come to him with it, as he always had. Carson had held her to hard and fast rules when she was younger, but the rules had been few, and he wasn't unreasonable.

"I'm really glad you're my father," she told him.

"I am too," he said, bemused, but his eyes were soft. "You know you can talk to me."

She nodded, her hair spilling over her shoulders. "I know."

She realized later, curled up in her old bed in the dark, that what she was feeling didn't have words for it. Not yet.

With her eyes closed she reached over and pulled out the drawer in the small table beside her bed, reached in and pulled out the framed picture. She dragged it up onto the bed and held it up, opened her eyes and watched his image resolve in the dim light.

Ned smiled back at her.

She sighed and put the picture back into the drawer and shut it with a clang, then clasped her hands under the pillow and tried to sleep. She just needed to get through the weekend and the reunion and she would be fine.

\--

"What time are you going to get there?"

Nancy, half her hair in curlers, looked at her vanity, which was covered in makeup. "What time does the invitation say, eight? I don't know, maybe eight-thirty or something."

"I heard Wendy was maybe going to give away door prizes." Bess's tone was scornful.

"Don't want to miss that, then," Nancy laughed. "But then, what do you give as a door prize to the girl who saved you from a psycho ex-boyfriend?"

"Maybe a pager?" Bess suggested. "Sorry you're the only one going stag. But not too sorry, otherwise I'd lend you Bryan for the evening."

"So George is coming with someone? I didn't know she was seeing someone new," Nancy commented idly, lips parting as she brushed mascara onto her lashes.

Bess laughed, nervous. "Funny story," she said. "Um."

"What?" Nancy tugged the rest of the curlers out of her hair and ran her fingers through it.

"She's bringing Ned."

Nancy's knees went weak and she collapsed back into her chair heavily. She couldn't speak for a moment. Finally she managed an "Oh."

"It's not that they're seeing each other, it's just, you know, he practically graduated with us and everything, and Wendy said it sounded great..." Bess babbled, filling the silence.

"She called Wendy and got her permission?" _And didn't call me,_ Nancy mentally finished.

"I'm sorry," Bess said.

The numb feeling began when Nancy hung up the phone. She could feel butterflies in her stomach. Huge butterflies. She walked over to her closet and she was years younger, approving again of the dress she had chosen a lifetime ago to show Ned what he was missing.

It was black and it clung to her every curve like a second skin.

She had a backup dress but once she put on the black one, the same one she'd worn to her junior prom, she couldn't bear to take it off, and she couldn't deny that she looked jaw-droppingly gorgeous in it.

Just as she couldn't deny that she was curious to see the look in his eyes when he saw it again.

Her father was playing with Sam downstairs. She was on his lap and he was trying to read something to her, but he was laughing, and when he looked up at Nancy, she felt sixteen again. His gaze followed her as she walked to the kitchen on bare feet, cracked open a can of diet soda and poked a straw in, to save her lipstick. Sam's blue-eyed gaze was following her, too, and Nancy laughed self-consciously as she sat down on the other end of the couch and dropped her shoes at her feet, took a long sip. "What, you two want a picture?"

"Great idea," Carson said. "I'll be right back."

There were still hours to wait but Nancy kept glancing at her slender silver watch. She sipped down the rest of her soda and took the can into the kitchen and stood in the middle of the cool floor, her hands at her sides, taking long slow breaths. Her heart was racing. The butterflies were legion. She could still go upstairs and change. She should go upstairs and change. She should put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and watch a cartoon with her daughter and her father and go to bed, shut her cell phone off and leave the door unanswered. Not do what she did, which was pick up her small tasteful handbag and kiss her father and daughter lightly on the cheeks and tell them not to wait up for her, and walk out to the car and crank the engine.

Two hours to waste, but she couldn't stay there, not with what was threatening to burst out of her skin.

She kept the air conditioning on high and drove out until the day began to turn blue with night. She drove by the park, the last place she had seen him; she drove down back roads until her mind was racing so fast that she couldn't think anymore, and found herself at Flanders' farm. She parked and let the car idle and the fingers gripping the steering wheel shook. Numb with butterflies. She'd had no idea it was even possible.

"So what if he'll be there," she said to herself. "Him and Don Cameron and a hundred other guys."

She stopped at a drive-thru for another diet soda and sat in the parking lot, sipping it. The tremor in her fingers slowed and finally stopped. There was nothing in her mind. No words.

She set her mouth and pulled down the vanity mirror and gave her makeup and hair a last once-over, then flipped it back up and cranked the engine.

\--

"Nancy!"

Her cheeks ached from smiling. She grabbed a table with Bess and her date, but on her way up to the bar she was stopped repeatedly, by people she hadn't seen since before she had been pregnant. Everyone was happy, exchanging stories and baby pictures, flashing engagement or wedding rings, making exaggerated groans at the music Wendy had chosen.

She kept glancing at the door. If George was coming, she was going to make a fashionably late entrance. She turned her engagement ring around and around on her finger, considered leaving, but Bess would protest, and the dancing hadn't even started. She sighed and stepped up to the bar, her pulse high as she checked her reflection one last time in the mirror.

Nancy finally had her one drink in her hand when the two of them walked in. George in black pants and low heels and a smooth sleeveless shell, smiling. She looked elegant.

Ned took Nancy's breath away with one glance.

He was in a classic, clean-cut suit, coal black, white button-down, freshly shaved, gleaming. The lights went down and she could still feel his gaze on her from across the room, from the greeting table, where he was handed a nametag he promptly shoved into a pocket.

Nancy closed her eyes and finished her drink in one smooth swallow, then winced and clicked the glass back onto the tablecloth.

Bryan seemed nice enough, with enough good humor to come with Bess even after he knew he was her show-off date. When Bryan walked up to the bar to get Bess another drink, Bess leaned over and said, "So?"

Nancy, with a supreme effort, managed to focus on her. "So?" she repeated.

"What do you think of Bryan?"

"He seems nice," Nancy echoed. "He's cute."

"I know," Bess said, giggling.

Nancy ran her gaze over the room, trying to find something, anything else to think about. Wendy climbed up on the stage and made a few remarks, her smile very perfect in her tanned face. She looked like a flight attendant. Greg Creely was dancing with Cheryl Ames. 

When Don Cameron asked her to dance, she nearly hugged him in relief.

"How have you been, Nancy?" Don asked, an easy smile on his face.

"Good," she told him, keeping her eyes on his and fighting the urge to scan the room as they slowly twirled. "I'm married and I have a little girl."

"That's great," Don replied, and his smile was genuine. "And you're happy?"

"Of course," Nancy laughed. "And how have you been? I feel like I haven't seen you in ages."

"I'm engaged, actually," Don told her. "She's great."

"Tell me about her," Nancy said, and watched his face light up. He looked so happy when he talked about her, her job and the way they were planning to spend the rest of their lives. She was glad he'd finally met someone who could appreciate him the way she never could. They continued through the next song, until Don glanced up over her shoulder, then slowed.

"Mind if I cut in?"

Her heart was in her throat when she turned around. Ned had his hand on her shoulder. Don nodded and dropped his hands, stepped back still smiling, and Ned took his place, with impeccable timing.

For a long moment Nancy couldn't speak. Ned folded his hand around hers and put the other on her waist and they swayed together with the music, a respectful distance between them. She just kept staring into his eyes, afraid to blink and miss the sight, afraid that this was the last time she would have the chance to memorize the curve of his jaw, the shadow of his eyelashes against his cheek. He searched her eyes and she couldn't breathe.

"Hey."

She smiled, then, even though she was trembling inside. "Hey."

"I'm having this weird déjà vu," he told her. "I walked in and when I saw you, for some reason, I felt like I was seventeen again."

Nancy ducked her head, blushing faintly, her fingers moving against his softly. "You too, huh."

He stared at some point over her shoulder for a moment. "You look good," he said.

"You too."

The song faded into another, slow and soft, and after a beat Nancy put her arms around his neck and he slipped his around her waist. She could see Bess over his shoulder, dancing with Bryan, her eyes sparkling. Nancy leaned her cheek against Ned's shoulder and closed her eyes.

"It's been so long."

"Yeah," Ned replied. "It's been a long time." They twirled slowly. "How have you been, since," he said, but trailed off.

"Fine," she told him. "Great. Frank was going to be here with me tonight, but," she shrugged.

He nodded. "Something came up," he completed. His eyes were soft.

She took a breath, traced her fingertips just over the back of his neck, and he shivered, closing his eyes. "I didn't know if you wanted to hear from me, so I just," she said, and sighed. 

"And I appreciate it." He opened his eyes again and looked into hers and she was transfixed. His face tilted down, looking into hers.

She smiled, hesitantly. "You think maybe we can email each other, exchange Christmas cards? Like normal people?"

"Maybe," he said. He reached up and tucked an errant strand of hair behind her ear.

"I didn't know what else there was to say."

"I don't know either," he breathed. He leaned down and they were still, swaying but gently together, as the song ended. He hugged her close to him, so briefly, too briefly. "Emails and Christmas cards. We can do that. We can," he sighed. "I just need more time."

Nancy pulled back as the song ended. "You still have feelings for me," she breathed.

Ned pulled away from her, his head down. George came by and he swept her into his arms for a fast dance and Nancy stood, frozen, in the middle of the dance floor, blushing faintly. Bess came over and grabbed her on her way back to the table, and Nancy stumbled along behind her, sinking gratefully into a seat.

"What's wrong?" Bess asked. "You look like you need a drink."

"I think I do," Nancy replied. "Or five. Five would be good."

The butterflies died, one by one. She sipped the rum and coke Bess brought her, but she couldn't feel it at all. After a few dances Don asked her for another, and she accepted, watching Ned dance with Wendy and then Bess. He looked happy, but Nancy couldn't smile. She managed to corner George after one dance.

"You taking Ned home?"

George shrugged. "We took a cab here, from my place," she said. She peered into Nancy's face, then. "You-- I didn't ask, but you're okay with him being here, right? I didn't think you'd mind."

"I'm fine," Nancy said. "I was just, surprised."

George smiled. "He was a good sport about all of it."

Nancy smiled back, then went to the bathroom and shut herself inside a stall and stared blankly at the metal door. She looked down at her hands, at her purse. She could leave now and be back at her father's house before midnight.

She put her face in her hands then and started shaking, but she didn't cry. She just felt numb. Email was something, though. Some connection.

She had thought about him every day since he had left her in the freezing rain and her father's yard.

She had taken the business card out and looked at it so much that it was dingy white. She had dialed his number a thousand times but had never completed the call, had started a hundred emails she never sent. She found herself drawing mittens in the margins of notebooks, seeing his name in nearly every word she read.

She had pulled the black dress out of the closet, had chosen to wear it, when she had known Frank wouldn't be with her, when she was hoping that maybe Ned would show. She had worn it, and part of her had wanted history to repeat itself. Had wanted him to see her and immediately,_immediately_ react, immediately respond, to take her into his arms and kiss her until she was breathless, to lead her on spiked heels to some deserted closet, and...

There she stopped. She ran her fingertips gently through her hair and took in deep breaths.

He was right. Distance. Distance and space. She had made a mistake in coming tonight.

She was in line, waiting for the coat check girl to return, when she felt a hand at her elbow. "Surely you're not leaving so soon."

Her smile was watery. "Kinda have to," she said, then turned to look at him. "You know," she shrugged. "Kids and everything."

His lips curved up in a soft smile. "One last dance," he said softly.

She hated herself for nodding. She hated herself for gesturing to the coat check girl to wait another five minutes. She hated the jockey for putting a slow one on. She hated her shoes.

She hated how familiar it was to be in Ned's arms.

She closed her eyes and she could feel his pulse thrumming under her fingertips, as they swayed so softly, moving with no thought or deliberation in his embrace. She could let herself cry and let her mascara run on the drive home, but not now. Not if this was all she would have to tide her through another six months without him.

His chest expanded, against hers, she could feel his breath against her ear, and a shudder slid its way down her spine. She tilted her head back and their gazes locked and she was sixteen again.

"Left pocket," he finally managed to murmur, and without breaking their gaze she reached down, quizzical, into his left jacket pocket, found a keycard there.

"Seven-twenty-four," he said into her ear. "Whenever you're ready."

For the twenty-nine minutes she spent in the ballroom of the hotel after that whisper, her heartbeat was a perceptible throb in her ears. He said his goodbyes and walked through the front doors, his hands in his pockets, toward the taxi stand. Nancy took a seat at the bar, but ordered a ginger ale. The alcohol she'd consumed earlier had already burned off. Whatever happened tonight, she had to be sober. She had to be sure.

"I'm with you tonight."

George didn't protest, just nodded, the beginning of a smile on her lips. Nancy finished her drink and fought the urge to have a cigarette, to calm the slow tremble in her fingertips.

In twenty-nine minutes she stood with her head bowed in front of the room. She'd been watched to the taxi stand, doubled back and took the back elevator up to six, the stairs to seven. Her heels were dangling from her right hand, her trenchcoat slung over her left arm.

She didn't tremble. She exhaled, soft and slow, slipped the keycard into the door and pushed down the handle.

He looked beautiful, in the soft light of the bedside lamp. She saw the subtle gleam, the shift in his gaze when he saw her.

"I thought we agreed to stay away from each other."

"Hey, it was my high school reunion," she reminded him, and the door closed quietly behind her.


	7. Chapter 7

"This isn't real," she told him. "None of this is real."

Her rings winked at her from the table. She had taken them off and put them there before they had hesitantly climbed onto the bed together, she still in her dress, he still in his undershirt and pants. He reached over her and pulled open the drawer and the sound was harsh, rasping in the still, stale air. He brushed her wedding and engagement rings into the drawer, to fall on top of the Gideon bible, then pushed the drawer back in, his arm falling over her waist.

"It's not real," he nodded.

She lay on her side facing away from him and he spooned up behind her, his knees bent and up against hers, his arms slipped around her waist. They were already too close, but they had not yet crossed any lines. She closed her eyes.

His arms tightened around her, the pressure of his embrace went from discomfort to pain, but she didn't cry out, didn't say a word. She put her hand over his and the feel of skin against skin... She wanted very much to pull his shirt over his head, drop it onto the carpet and trace the lines of his muscles with a fingertip, a gentle palm. She wanted to see the golden planes of his face in shadow on the pillow beneath her. Her misery before their last dance was nothing in the face of this. She didn't know why she had come to his room, didn't know why she had climbed up to curl with him over the covers, but it didn't matter. Not as long as she could stay like this.

She turned around in his arms and he crushed her to him, so tight that she could only breathe in when he breathed out, two halves of a whole, trading the same air. She put her arms up around his shoulders and closed her eyes. She felt the tip of his nose against the tip of hers, then down her cheek, against her ear. The throb of his heart against her chest. He nuzzled into her and his lips were smooth but closed, the brush so faint that it didn't count as a kiss.

They stayed that way, so tight and close. Her eyes closed. Not happening. If she opened her eyes and saw his she would lose it, lose everything, the skin-thin conviction that as long as she did not admit, there would be no consequences. She ran her fingers through his hair a few times and let her forehead rest against his.

"Nan."

"We're not doing anything wrong."

Their breath mingled. His mouth. His lips had to be inches from hers.

She buried her face against his shoulder and released the breath she had been holding.

_Not yet_ echoed unspoken between them.

"I missed you."

"I missed you too," he said, but his voice was rough, hard.

For the briefest instant her eyes fluttered open, and she saw him so close to her, and the wave of pure desire she felt was dizzying, intoxicating, overwhelming. She closed her eyes again and released a breath, taking his. "It wasn't supposed to be like this," she whispered. "It was never supposed to be like this. I thought." She stopped and licked her lips, fell silent.

"What," he breathed, and she felt his fingertips brush her cheek. "What is it."

She opened her eyes then and stared into his, and his fingers stilled on her skin. "I thought you'd never be able to forgive me. And then I found out about Sam, and I knew you'd never be able to forgive me. To raise his child as yours."

"I don't know what I would have done," he whispered, and she could feel his breath against her lips, and it was just another inch toward the cliff, but she couldn't care about that now.

She leaned forward and buried her face against his chest and closed her eyes and breathed him in. Soap and aftershave, and him. Not a hint of cigarette smoke.

She couldn't sleep. Sometimes he moved, restless, brushed a hand over her air, down her bare arm, against her hip, and her eyes would flutter open in the darkness and she would wait until her heart slowed its way back into her chest. She couldn't miss a second of it. Because this, this night, resting in his arms, this was not happening. This was not real. It was all illusion. Never to be repeated or relived or mentioned, after it was over.

"We don't talk," she mumbled.

"We do," he said, and his voice was rough, but his breath had never fallen into that shallow cadence, signaling his sleep. "We talk."

"Not like we used to," she told him. "And then there's Frank, and I feel like I can barely start a conversation with him before he's gone again."

He nodded and her lips parted and she hated the pang of disappointment low in her belly when he didn't lean down and complete the kiss. Complete.

"But you're happy with him."

She could hear it in his voice. It took every ounce of strength he had, and that strength was formidable, to force those words out. She could almost feel his jaw clenching in the dark. She reached up and traced her fingertips over it, memorizing it as she had his every breath.

"Not the way I was with you."

She would have lingered in his arms, wishing he would cross the line and hoping that he wouldn't, until the maid kicked them out of the room, but the sun bled under the curtains by slow blue-white degrees and her arms were stiff and sore and the look on his face was the kind of longing she recognized, even through the creased eyelids and stubbled cheeks.

"We have to go."

She buried her face against his chest again. "We don't," she murmured. "We don't have to."

For all the resolve in his voice, he couldn't stop touching her. The light circle of his fingers around his wrist as they shared the sink, brushing their teeth, briskly tossing cold water on their faces. His palm curved against the small of her back. When there was nothing else left to do, no other excuses they could make to stay in the room, she walked over to the bed and pulled the drawer out of the table and picked up her rings, put them on the top.

"Wait," he said softly, and when she turned to him he swept her up in his arms, her feet no longer on the ground, her breath no longer her own. She put her arms around his shoulders and pressed her face into his neck, and now, with the knowledge, she felt her face begin to constrict with the first tears. She pulled in a breath and shook on the edge of it.

"I don't want to leave," she whispered. "I don't want to go back to emails and Christmas cards and never knowing when I'm going to see you again. And I don't care if that's wrong."

He pulled back and they regarded each other, her blue eyes pooling with tears. "It's," he whispered, then shook his head. His next words were all in a rush, without thought. "I'm having lunch at the little Italian place on Lake Shore Drive," he said. "Around noon."

The expression in his eyes was fearful. Vulnerable.

She tilted her head down the barest inch. "I'll be there."

\--

She put her keys on the hall table in her father's house and ran her hands through her hair, kicking her shoes off. The house was quiet; her father's car was gone. He had probably taken Sam to church, to show her off. She went upstairs and grabbed a fluffy bath sheet, shut herself into her old bathroom and turned on the shower.

If she did this.

But, she realized, stepping into the stall and turning her face into the spray, that it was no longer a question of if. Not anymore.

She left a note for her father, explaining that she was going out for the afternoon and would be back later, in time for dinner. She stopped at a coffee shop and bought the biggest iced caramel mocha latte they had and sipped it until she could see without actively willing herself to focus. She wasn't tired. She was running on the thin high nervous energy, the same energy she'd been feeling since her fingers had closed around the keycard the night before.

Then she walked into a lingerie store.

She had bought herself silky little sets before, little lace-trimmed nightgowns, but that had been when she and Ned were still together. She had never been able to wear them for Frank. Part of never instigating was never wearing satin or silk to his bed, always acting like every night he turned to her was spontaneous and a pleasant surprise. Never anticipated or actively desired. Never admitting that her disappointment in their first night together had never been answered, and she had stopped wondering if it would be.

She picked out a set in black satin, trimmed in the thinnest lace, and stood in the dressing room regarding herself, head tilted to the side, her heart racing. Yes.

When the cashier called her up, Nancy dropped two tags on the counter. "Ring me up," she said.

\--

He was sipping an iced water when she arrived, maneuvering between tables, five minutes past noon, surrounded by laid-back couples who had spent the previous night together, tired-eyed businessmen and trophy wives. The nervousness only she could see in his face faded when he caught sight of her, and he smiled.

"I was wondering if you would come."

"Wouldn't have missed it for worlds," she said softly. She glanced around. "Don't let me out of your sight."

He chuckled. "I haven't arranged for any kidnappings, fake or otherwise."

They were indistinguishable from the other couples, the ones who had spent the previous night wrapped in each other's arms. He offered her a bite of his ravioli, on his fork, and she took it, smiling. They ordered dessert with two spoons and he paid with an unobtrusive gold card and when they left the restaurant she led him to her car without comment or apprehensive glance.

"Where to?"

He rested his arm against the lowered window and directed her through the winding streets of downtown Chicago. As she waited for a stoplight to change she turned her head and their gazes met, and it was all easy. Like riding a bike. Like falling. She was falling, but falling was only giving in to gravity, to nature, to the pull she felt when she looked into his eyes.

A car horn from behind them startled her back, and she caught the faintest smile on his face before she turned back to the road ahead of them.

"How much time do you have?"

He unlocked his apartment and turned his head to look at her and she blushed, softly. "I left a note for my dad that I'd be back in time for dinner."

He had left the stereo on. The sound was mournful. The hardwood floor was spread with rag rugs and there were a few dishes in the sink and his movie collection had tripled since she had last seen it. She stepped into a pool of sunlight and smiled.

No framed pictures of girlfriends. No lace-trimmed pillows. No hint of perfume in the air.

"Do you have a girlfriend right now?"

If he was taken aback at the directness of her question, he didn't show it. "Not right now."

He cued up a movie and then settled on the couch, near her. At first they didn't touch, but just like the nights they had spent on her father's couch, on his parents' couch, in the Omega Chi common room, soon his arm was around her shoulders, soon hers was tucked behind his back to rest on his waist, and as before, it was nothing, it was not happening, she was just lost in another memory. She put her head on his shoulder and fought off the overwhelming desire to sleep, to let herself rest in his arms again.

His hand slid over her upper arm. "You okay?"

She nodded, then reached over to pull an afghan over her lap. "I'm just a little cold."

"Here," he said softly, leaning back, resting his head against the arm of the couch. He pulled her on top of him, her back to his front, the afghan draped over both of them, her head cradled on his upper chest. His hand draped casually against her stomach. She could feel the nearly imperceptible pressure of his fingers over her shirt more than anything else.

"Thanks."

She looked at her watch after the movie, while he was in the kitchen pouring them both sodas, wondering how late was too late for dinner, how fast she could make the drive back to River Heights. The television was displaying some overexuberant pregame show, and she snapped it off, walked over to his stereo, and soon the same melancholy strains were swelling in the room. Thick dark clouds were racing over the sun, sweeping the room into alternate shadows. She ran her fingertips over the jewel cases of his music collection and then he was at her elbow, just as the sky opened, just as the first startled spray of raindrops peppered his window.

"Here you are," he said.

She took her drink and put it down on the coffee table, took his out of his hand and put it next to hers, and they moved into each other's arms, swaying slowly with the music, the soft cadence of the rain. He pressed his lips gently against the crown of her head, her forehead, and then she tilted her face back to look up into his, her pulse quick and terribly heavy in her chest.

"I never stopped loving you," she whispered.

He stopped, then. Stopped moving, stopped the gentle stroke of his fingers over the small of her back, and she was powerless to move. She searched his eyes until she could no longer bear the uncertainty of his silence, and then her gaze dropped, her lips trembling slightly. She moved out of his arms and swept her purse off a low table, her shoes off the narrow strip of floor between the couch and table, and sucked in a swift trembling breath, her sight blurring and swimming as she walked to his door. Her engagement ring sliding under the ball of her thumb, the same nervous gesture.

She had just snapped back the deadbolt when his hand closed over her upper arm, the shock of skin on skin, and she turned around to look into his face, afraid of what she would see there.

"I never stopped loving you either."

\--

The ball of her thumb slipped against her wedding ring and she nudged it up to the joint, rubbed the paler skin beneath.

He pulled the rings off her finger and flung them to the floor. 

The violence of the gesture startled her. The violence with which he swept her up into his arms and pinned her against the door and kissed her, that was expected. She reached up and twined her fingers through his hair, returning the kiss, desperate and hard. When he pulled back for breath his skin was still on hers, arms against her back and his forehead against her temple and his lips an inch from her cheek. She turned her face to his again and their mouths met, and if there had been a spark before...

She wrapped her legs around his waist as he carried her to the back half of the apartment, the promise of the half-open door, her thumb rubbing her newly bare finger. She bent to him, her hand still resting against his scalp, pressed her lips against the warm flesh just under his jaw, and he made a soft noise. If she said a word, if she seemed at all unsure, maybe this would vanish like mist and they would look at each other with wordless horror and dread, making further impassioned promises to never be alone together again, to never cross the line. To breathe back in the words they had spoken.

Never. Never again.

She kissed him and he rested her weight against the edge of the doorframe, leaning in to return it, demanding, insistent, rough. Teeth and the pressure of his tongue in her mouth. Her fingernails against the back of his neck. He gasped for breath.

They were in his bedroom. His bed was a tangle of sheets and comforter, the curtains flung back and the rain beating on the windowpanes. He put her down at the foot of his bed, to stand on her still bare feet, her shoes and purse dropped, forgotten. They reached for each other again, immediately, leaving no space to question, to hesitate. His fingers curling through her belt loops, pulling her up until she was on her toes.

"Do you," he whispered against her skin.

She rested her palm against the curve of his jaw for a moment, then reached down and pulled off her loose cotton top, let it fall from her fingers to the floor. He reached up, after a beat, hooked a fingertip just under the black satin strap.

"He's never seen this," she breathed, answering the question in his eyes.

For the first time he stopped, tracing his fingers over her cheek. "Tell me you're awake," he murmured. "That I'm not dreaming this."

"We're awake," she said. Then she smiled. "Or maybe this isn't happening and we're asleep on your couch and the movie is still on."

He leaned back and they looked at his empty couch, the afghan tossed across in a haphazard pile. "Yeah," he said softly. "Something else that isn't really happening."

She drew his face down to his for another hard kiss, taking his hand in hers, pulling it up to rest over her heart. "No, this is real," she whispered.

He drank in every inch of her skin. Every slow inch. He shoved back the sheets, impatient, their clothes on the floor, and laid her down, watching her as she, her gaze still on his, reached behind her and unfastened her bra, pulled it off. When he touched her she flinched, softly, her flesh hypersensitive, then relaxed into it, reached up to cup his face in her hands. When he leaned down to kiss her she wrapped her legs around him, pulled him in close to her, her fingernails trailing down his back.

He pulled back and she let her palms rest at his hips, just over his boxers. He closed his eyes.

"I have condoms."

"You clean, Nickerson?"

He nodded, and a smile flirted with his lips. "You were the only one I never wrapped it up with."

"But we never actually had sex," she said. Her thumbs slipped under his waistband. "If you remember."

"Don't remind me," he said. "We have a lot of lost time to make up for." He leaned back, reached over to slide open the drawer.

She put her hand on his, pushed the drawer back in. "I'm on birth control," she said. "And when I come I don't want it to be latex I'm feeling inside me."

He pushed his boxers off in one swift gesture, pulled off her underwear, and their mouths met again, his fingers in her hair, her legs twined around his hips. He slipped his hand between her trembling thighs.

They had never had sex. They had come very close, they had known each other so intimately that sex was almost an afterthought, they had talked about it and had decided to try only to pull back, breathless and panting and afraid. The first time he'd gotten to third she had cried after, afraid that she was no longer a virgin, that he wouldn't love her anymore, that he wouldn't want her to be his wife anymore. On quiet summer afternoons with the sun hot on her skin they had learned each other, in fluttering butterfly touch and smooth fingertips, and he had knelt over her with such wonder on his face, drinking in her every movement, the pleasure and pain on her face, in the stolen hours.

She had never learned to touch Frank Hardy.

Ned's tongue was in her mouth and his fingers slipped between her thighs and she groaned, her blood singing in her veins. He shifted and she had seen him naked, touched him naked, but it had been a lifetime since, and he, and they had never.

He moved inside her.

She tightened. Three years. Three years of accepting, enduring her husband's touch. Three years of want and desire and need unanswered. Three years. She arched underneath him, her lips parting, and this was new, this was, he was, he sighed and he was so deep, and she tilted her knees back and sighed against his neck as he began to rock so gently, so hesitantly. His fingers stroking her flesh.

"Don't stop," she whispered. "Oh, my God, don't stop, don't stop..."

She moaned and he closed his eyes, and with every stroke of his fingertips she cried out, again and again, the soles of her bare feet against the small of his back, her fingernails against his pillow. He thrust and she tilted her head back, beyond words, beyond anything else, her arms sliding up around his shoulders, digging into his skin, and when she felt the first spasm she pressed her face against his chest and screamed. He laced his fingers between hers and pinned her to the bed, moving over her, moving inside her, hard, insistent, and she tensed, shaking as she began to come.

"Baby, Nancy, Nancy," he moaned, pressed his mouth to her temple, her cheek. She tilted her head back and he kissed her, his tongue between her teeth, as he penetrated her so deeply, and they were motionless as she spasmed and whimpered underneath him and he came hot and wet inside her.

He kissed her with a soft audible pop and pulled back, still buried between her thighs, feeling the last clenched spasm. "You okay," he breathed, tracing his fingers over her cheek, and he was reduced to grey shadow above her.

"My God," she breathed again as he slipped out of her. "My God."

He smiled. "I _know_ that wasn't your first," he said, his voice low and rough.

She breathed in and smiled back at him, her legs still lazily clasped around his hips. "It was my first since that night after the party when you took me back to the frat house and we went upstairs and we were--"

"You're joking," he said, his eyes widening. He let out a low laugh. "You can't be serious."

She ran her hand through her hair and nodded. "I haven't had an orgasm since the last time you gave me one."

He laughed again, incredulous, and she gazed up into his eyes. "Missionary five times a month, and that's when he's home. He doesn't know the meaning of foreplay and he couldn't find my clit with a map and a miner's hat."

"You've never... you've never..."

She nodded, reaching up to run her fingers through his hair, to pull his face back down to hers. She put her mouth against his ear. "You're the only man who's ever felt me come from the inside."

He kissed her hard, then, rolled her over so that they were facing each other, and he pulled her close, skin against sweat-dampened skin. "I can't believe it," he murmured, resting his lips in a gentle kiss against her forehead. "Nan."

She closed her eyes. "What time is it," she whispered.

He looked at his alarm clock, and told her, running his hand over her hair. "It's still raining."

"Why can't it sleet," she whispered. She put her arms around him and held him tight to her. "Why can't it ice over and I could call my dad and tell him I have to stay here."

He smiled, but didn't answer, just kept stroking her hair.

"Mind if I use your shower," she asked, her eyes fluttering closed again.

He trailed his fingers over her cheek. "In a minute," he said. "I don't want to let you go yet."

She nestled against him. "Oh God," she whispered into his skin. "I don't want to let you go either. I don't ever want to leave this room."

He leaned down and kissed her as she shrank inward with the first gasped convulsive sob. He held her and pressed his forehead to hers and she cried in great wrenching breaths, both of them naked in the fading summer sunlight.

After a while, when she could wait no longer, they took a shower together. He kissed her and she returned it, hard, until he lifted her into his arms and she wrapped her legs around his waist again, until she was gasping his name, his hips surging between her spread thighs. She screamed into the hard muscle of his shoulder, the flash of teeth against his skin, and then she was on her feet again, unsteady, gazing up into his eyes.

"I love you," she whispered, her voice drowned in the water pounding around them.

"I love you," he replied. "I love you."

"You don't have a hair dryer," she said, once she had toweled off and was finding her underwear.

He laughed softly. "No," he said. "Sorry."

She looked out the window. "I was just caught in the rain," she said to herself. "That's all."

He stepped into clean boxers and a pair of jeans and reached over, folding his fingers around hers. She brushed a wet strand of hair out of her eyes and gazed up at him, her eyes filling again.

"This was it," he said.

"What do you mean," she said, but her heart sank.

His smile was soft, pained. "We can't do this again."

She bowed her head. "I guess you're right," she said. "I guess... I just, I just," she said, and closed her eyes, another tear streaking down her cheek. "But we can, we can email each other, right," she said softly. "And maybe call each other." The expression in her eyes was pleading, heartbreaking.

"Nan," he said, turning his cheek, almost shaking his head.

She grabbed him, then. "Did it mean nothing to you?" she cried, her fists beating against his chest.

He took her wrists in his hands, his jaw set hard. "Did it mean nothing to you?" he returned, his voice low and rough. "You're going back to him. You're going to walk out that door back to him and leave me here and you have the nerve to ask me if it meant nothing to me. Nancy, we can't do this. We can't. Maybe you want a lover, but I'm not it."

"I don't want a lover," she told him softly.

"Good," he said. "I'm going to stay away from you. I don't think we should call each other or see each other. Because knowing," he breathed, tracing his fingers down her cheek. "How could I act like I don't want you."

She closed her hand around his. "That was it?" she said softly.

"If I can't be the only guy in your life," he said.

She pulled his face down to his and he kissed her softly and pulled back, even as she slid her arms around his neck and held him to her.

"You have to let me go," he whispered.

"No," she whispered.

He put his arms around her and lifted her up off the ground and held her as she sobbed, gasping, trembling against him.

"You made your choice," he whispered.

"I did," she cried. "I chose you."


	8. Chapter 8

"Do I have to go?"

Nancy looked down at Sam. The expression on Sam's face was heartbreaking. She knelt down, so their faces were level.

"You know the deal we made," Nancy said, brushing Sam's hair back. "You just have to go today. If you don't like it, then we'll do something else."

Sam shifted her backpack, the one she'd picked out a week ago, back when the prospect of preschool was still far-off and vaguely exciting. The furrow was between her eyebrows again. "Okay," she said, grudgingly. "You'll be back soon?"

Nancy nodded. "I'll be back soon. We can go have lunch together, wherever you want."

Sam did finally smile, then, and Nancy wrapped her arms around her daughter's shoulders and hugged her before she allowed herself to be led inside by one of the aides.

Nancy stood and watched until Sam was out of her sight. The aide standing outside, helping children out of cars, looked up expectantly.

"Noon, right?" Nancy said faintly.

The aide nodded. "She'll be fine."

"I know," Nancy said.

Sam would be at preschool for four hours. She wasn't yet old enough to stay an entire day, nor did Nancy especially want her to. The days were so long already. Frank was at the office.

She was glad.

Since she had come back from the weekend of the reunion she had been hypersensitive while around her husband. The first time he'd reached for her in their bed she had hesitated for a moment, her mind racing, wanting to think up some excuse. In the end she had given in and stared at the ceiling, and when he was out on their porch smoking she crept silently to their bathroom and knelt on the floor, fighting the nausea and the sickening certainty that she had just betrayed Ned again.

They had not attempted to contact each other and she told herself that it was for the best. She didn't hate Frank. She had vowed to stay with Frank. She didn't tell anyone else what had happened that weekend, she didn't write it down anywhere, she didn't look through brochures of weekend getaways fantasizing about seeing him again.

But she thought about it all the time.

She almost wished that she could bring herself to hate her husband. But when she looked back, she couldn't have made any other choice. Despite the feelings she still had for Ned, Frank was Sam's father, and Frank had deserved to know that, and she owed it to Frank and to her daughter to stick by the decision to marry him.

She didn't love Frank. She was fond of him, and in their own way, they did love each other, but if she had ever been in love with him that time was long past. He was familiar, now, after three years of sporadically sharing a bed. He was considerate and he was a good guy, but he was not her good guy alone. She was slowly understanding that he never would be. But he wasn't just leaving her anymore, he was leaving Sam.

Better for Sam to have a father who was sometimes there, than no father at all. Nancy did believe that, even while she lay awake brushing away tears and wishing Frank was home, if for no other reason than to help protect them from the danger his job had put them in.

If not for Sam, she would not be with Frank.

If not for Sam, she would never have married Frank. Not because Frank was a congenital flirt, but because Frank took his job so seriously; he believed that his calling was to help others. That he could do so because she agreed to stay home with their daughter instead of doing the same was just a testament to the fact that she believed it too.

It wasn't fair. Life had stopped being fair the minute the doctor walked in with her test results.

She shook her head. No, she had accepted Frank Hardy's advances on the edge of the lake that rainy night because she wanted to, and she had accepted the consequences. But Sam was far more than a consequence. She would give up her life for Sam. She would do everything she possibly could for the sake of her daughter.

Even if doing what was best for Sam meant cutting the man she loved out of her life completely.

\--

"You want to send her where?" Frank had asked.

"Montessori," Nancy said, smoothing the brochure open on the dining room table. "It's a half-day preschool, it's about half an hour away from the house..."

"Ahh, you just want some free time."

"Not at all," Nancy said. "She doesn't get to see that many kids her own age. This way she'll get a head start on school, and she won't be away for too long, not until she's comfortable with it."

Frank started skimming through the material she'd brought home. "It's private."

"They have a space open but they need to know by the end of the week."

"Is this what you want? For her?"

"I want her to have the best," Nancy said. "She's already so bright, you don't see her, the questions she's already asking me. She's just..."

"I do see her," Frank protested mildly. "She's ours. Of course she's bright, Nan, she's perfect."

Nancy's fingers twisted against her palm until her nails had made hard bright numb points against her flesh. "So it's okay?"

Frank smiled. "Sure. Just make sure I get the bill."

Nancy ran her fingers through her hair, then went back to the stove, where their dinner was simmering. A lifetime ago she had picked out the Montessori in Chicago that she and Ned's children would go to, but that had been another life.

"Thanks," she murmured, her fingers drifting through the edges of steam, smoking the rings on her left hand.

\--

"See?" Sam demanded.

Nancy strapped her daughter into the seat, then accepted the sheet of paper Sam was thrusting at her. On an off-white sheet of newsprint Sam had glued a square of fabric approximating a pink mitten the same size as her hand, too carefully trimmed to have been her own work. Nancy smiled.

"It's beautiful," she said, and rubbed her other palm over her face in a weary gesture. "Where do you want to go for lunch?"

After chicken nuggets and a cup of applesauce Sam had twisted out of her light jacket and tossed off her shoes, and was now climbing her way through the ball pit. Nancy stabbed the last few shreds of lettuce with her fork and brought it to her mouth, then changed her mind and let it drop.

She kept looking at the pink mitten, carefully wedged under the tray so it wouldn't flutter away in the cooler wind.

Her cell phone was ringing, Frank's specific tone. Nancy sighed and flipped her phone open.

"I'm really sorry," he began, before she had even said hello.

"I know," Nancy replied.

\--

"You'll be in when?" Carson asked.

"Around six tonight," Nancy replied. "We can take a cab, if it's too much trouble."

"No trouble at all," her father replied. "We can have dinner together, unless you're going to leave me babysitting the whole weekend again."

Nancy laughed at him. "You can't blackmail me," she said. "Besides, there's no reunion this weekend. We can do whatever you want. Play checkers, cards, dominos, go out to a movie, the ballet..."

"Lucky for you, my schedule is entirely clear this weekend," Carson said. "Next weekend, it's that special time again."

"Fishing trip?"

"Yeah, before it gets too cold," he said. "See you tonight. I've missed you."

"Miss you too."

She had been going down to Bayport over weekends, ever since, respecting Ned's wishes and his decision. But she missed her father, she missed Chicago in the fall, and her in-laws needed a break. 

Nancy put the phone down. "We're going to go see Grandpa," she told Sam, who smiled.

\--

Sam at the age of three had more frequent flyer miles than she'd ever be able to use, all from the brief flights between their house and her grandparents. The prospect of a plane trip held no thrill for her anymore. She flipped through the laminated and much-handled book she had brought home from school with her, then stared out the window, watchful and quiet.

Nancy looked at the fields spread out under the plane as they descended, and her heart began to speed.

Her father had to have driven straight from the office. He was still in a grey suit and shirt sleeves, and even if Sam no longer anticipated or feared planes, she still grinned and hugged her grandfather when she saw him. Nancy kissed Carson on the cheek, shouldering her carry-on, making sure Sam had her bright backpack on her shoulders.

At the house, Nancy saw the chess problem set up on the table, and walked over to touch the white queen. Sam followed her, and after she climbed up onto the table she reached out for the same.

Nancy put her hand over her daughter's. "It's for a game," she said. "Not a toy."

Sam nodded seriously. "Can we play?"

Carson walked up behind them, and Nancy smiled at her father. "Trying to puzzle through something?"

"Well, now that you're so far away, I have to do something when I'm stuck on a case," Carson laughed. "We can play."

Sam smiled, but Nancy picked her up. "You can sit on my lap and watch," Nancy told her daughter. "And then maybe one day Grandpa will teach you like he taught me."

Carson poured them both cups of coffee while Nancy returned the board to starting positions, but Sam only made it through watching the opening moves before she started digging through her backpack for a coloring book. Carson took a thoughtful sip of coffee, looked at his granddaughter, then at the young woman across the table, considering her next move.

"How have you been, Nan?"

Nancy's mouth half-curved up in a smile. "You trying to distract me?" she asked, taking her turn. "We've been well."

"As though I could distract you," Carson said, looking down at the board. "I was just wondering if something happened the last time you were here. I barely saw you that weekend, and it's been months..."

Nancy looked up and caught her father's gaze. Her fingers were trembling slightly on the table top. She was the first to look away. "Frank and I were," she began, feeling terrible. "We were going through a patch. But we're okay."

"Just okay?"

Nancy forced a smile. "I think it's fair," she said, then glanced over at her daughter, who was oblivious. "I don't see him enough for it to be anything more or less."

Carson made his own move. "Maybe I should talk to him."

Nancy propped her chin on her hand and studied her father's face. "It wouldn't do any good," she said quietly. "But thanks."

\--

It started with a tiny lie.

"What time are you going back?" Carson had asked, and Nancy, with hardly any deliberation, had replied, "Just before lunch."

And she did get a cab, after brunch, but she didn't take it to the airport as her father assumed. She and Sam went to a park, where Sam climbed on a swing and Nancy pushed her, trying to make up her mind. The weather was gorgeous. They could easily waste the time until their flight here, at dinner...

Nancy took Sam's hand. "You want to go visit someone?"

Sam looked up into her mother's face. "Okay," she said.

Nancy directed the cab from memory through the streets, nervous. But Sam's presence would make things easier. How could he turn down five minutes of her time, when she had Sam at her side?

While they waited for the elevator she almost turned back.

"Where are we going?"

Nancy looked down at Sam. "To see a friend of mine," she said. "Just until we go home."

"Oh," Sam said. "A friend?"

"You've met him," Nancy said, but her heart was pounding in her throat as they approached his door. "It's okay."

Ned answered the door in a soft grey shirt and faded jeans, his feet bare, and his eyes lit when he saw Nancy. "Hi," he said.

"Hi," Nancy said. "I just... me and Sam..."

Her heart sank down to her feet when she heard ice cubes against glass from his kitchen. "You want another one?" a voice called, and then a woman came into view. Smooth jet black hair, piercing blue eyes. Her feet were bare.

"Thought maybe you'd like to get some coffee with us," Nancy murmured, blushing faintly. "But I guess not."

Ned glanced over his shoulder, made some smooth gesture, and the woman pouted before she vanished back into the kitchen. "You have a flight later?" he asked Nancy, his voice low.

"Yeah, but," Nancy said, and swept Sam up into her arms. "I just... forget it."

He reached out and touched her arm. "Can you give me an hour? The Italian place?"

She looked up into his face, but couldn't speak. The tears were rising behind her eyes; she had to get away before he could see them. She couldn't cry about this. She was the one who had left him and been married. She had no right to feel this sick, black jealousy.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come here. I'll," she said, and turned away.

He looked after her, his face a mask, but didn't call out, didn't ask her to come back. After he closed the door the woman in his kitchen walked backed to the couch. Sashayed. Her hips were exaggerated curves.

"Who was that?"

"A friend," Ned replied. "She's been going through some bad stuff lately."

"Oh?" she said, taking a sip of her drink. "Looks like it."

She was on her couch with her legs crossed, the remote in her hand, her tone bored. When he walked around the couch and stood staring at her, she looked up, her eyes light and disdained.

He took the remote out of her hand. He leaned over and picked up her drink, took it to the kitchen, and dumped it into his sink.

"Hey!"

He unbolted the door and peered down the hallway, found it deserted. When he looked back at the couch, she was staring at him, her brow furrowed, scowling.

"Get out," he said, his voice low and even, but firm.

"What?"

"Get out," he repeated, stepping back.

Once she had disappeared down the hallway, swearing she'd never go out with him again, Ned dug his cell phone out of his jeans pocket and dialed her number.

After three rings, Nancy answered. "What?"

Ned sighed. "I'll be there in ten minutes. If you'll just wait for me."

\--

Her face was flushed when he walked in. He signaled the waiter for a coffee and then sat down opposite her. Sam regarded him with interest. "Hey," he told her softly.

Nancy stirred the cup of coffee in front of her. "I-- I'm sorry," she said. "You have your life and I have mine, and I shouldn't have dropped by like that."

He shrugged. "Drop by whenever you want," he said. "I mean, it'd be easier if you called first," he said, with the same old grin, and she fought down the anger with sustained effort.

"I didn't know," she said, and shook her head. "After the way we left things."

He nodded, thanked the waiter for his coffee and took a sip. "So you just wanted to kill some time before your flight?"

"Did she put up a fight when you threw her out?" Nancy said suddenly, her voice hard, bitter.

Ned reached over and cupped her chin in his hand. "Hey," he said softly, and when she looked up her eyes were flashing, angry. "You know I'd drop everything for you."

She shook her head, pushing his hand away, and glanced over at Sam. "How am I supposed to know that," she said quietly. "She your new girlfriend?"

"I won't be seeing her anymore."

Nancy laughed, then. "How many girlfriends have you had, since that day I ran into you at the grocery store," she asked.

He shrugged. "None of them last long," he said. "How can I count people who don't matter."

"Suckup," she accused him mildly, but she was smiling.

He rested his fingertips over hers, then looked over at Sam, who was leaning over in her seat, blinking slowly. "What, did you two go to the clubs last night?" he said, tilting his head to indicate her.

"We've had a big day," Nancy said. "Sorry."

Ned glanced around, then pulled out his billfold, left a bill on the table. "Come on," he said. "She can take a nap at my place."

\--

She wondered if he was thinking the same thing she was.

He had his arm around her shoulders and they were on his couch again, taking turns glancing at her daughter every few minutes, trying to keep their attention on the television. She and Frank had never spent an evening this way, waiting for their daughter to drift off before they raced each other to the bedroom.

She glanced over at Ned. Maybe he wasn't feeling it. Maybe it was all her. She was all high nervousness, her every breath marking another second less she could spend with him before she boarded the plane, back to the life she had chosen. It wasn't enough to feel his fingertips resting lightly against her upper arm. It wasn't enough anymore to be able to say his name softly, to see him gaze into her eyes. She wanted more, now. She needed more.

"I think she's asleep," Ned breathed, looking down at Sam.

Nancy looked over at her daughter, holding for a long moment, then turned back to Ned and nodded, afraid to speak, afraid to even breathe, in case Sam would stir and open her beautiful blue eyes and their opportunity would be lost.

He eased off the couch, so slowly, making as little noise as he possibly could, and reached for Nancy's hand.

She took a deep breath and followed him to his bedroom.

She felt his hands at her waist immediately, once the door was closed and they were in the too quiet darkness. Unbuttoning her jeans. No hesitation, nothing timid about it at all. She tugged at his shirt and he leaned forward, submissive as she pulled it over his head and tossed it, her nerves trembling with anticipation, holding back the relieved laughter just behind her lips. He wanted her. He still wanted her, even after everything he'd said, everything they'd said. His mouth found hers, rough and hard, and she pulled off her wedding rings, led him to the side of the bed, and put them down on the bedside table before reaching up to twine her bared fingers in his hair. He backed her against the mattress and she fumbled with his jeans, peeling them open, smiling at his relieved sigh.

She couldn't wait. When he sank to the bed, her legs wrapped around his waist, she reached up and wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him to her still sitting, and after their kiss he breathed into her ear, "Like this?"

When she nodded he shoved the pillows roughly off the bed and pulled her back with him, sat back and braced against the headboard, reached up and rested his hands against her hips, gently shifting the angle, gently urging her down to him, her face in flushed shadow above his. She bit her lip and kissed him again, hard, and he shifted his knees up behind her, urging her down until they touched, met, and she mounted him with the slow, gentle rock of her hips.

But for her daughter sleeping in the next room, she would have cried out. She settled for harsh gasps edged in the soft exquisite pain of it, low groans and her teeth against his skin, against his shoulder, against his lip when they kissed, hard and possessive. She marked him in livid crescents, the pressure of her fingernails on his flesh, his hips rising up to meet hers. When they broke he was so deep within her that she could barely breathe without crying out, her embrace tight around him, her mouth pressed against the side of his neck as she screamed, her eyelashes fluttering in butterfly touch, his fingers, hard muscle under glistening skin and his face tilted up with lips parted and eyes closed in quiet rapture.

After, he was trailing slow kisses over her bare stomach, her hand resting on the back of his head, her rings on the table at his bedside. She made a soft noise and he crawled up, over her, his mouth finding hers in the darkness. She kissed him, hard, and there was nothing beyond the two of them, nothing else in the world.

"Mama?"

"Oh my God," Nancy said against his mouth, and Ned pulled back, reaching over to pick up his boxers. "Robe?"

He tossed his robe to her and made sure she was covered before he pulled on his jeans and opened the door of his bedroom, his chest still bare. Sam blinked sleepily at him from the couch.

"Hey," he said, softly. "Just give her a minute."

Nancy zipped her jeans and tugged her shirt back on, glancing at Ned before she walked out, both of them blushing softly. "Hey baby, did you go to sleep?"

Sam nodded and rubbed at one eye. "Where did you go?"

"Bathroom," Ned covered easily. "Nan, when did you have to...?"

"Oh," Nancy said, glancing at her watch. "Yeah. We'll get a cab."

"I'll drive you," Ned offered.

Nancy started packing as Ned vanished back into his bedroom for the shirt she had pulled over his head and thrown across the room. Sam willingly was manipulated into her coat, and Ned walked out of his bedroom in a soft black leather jacket that made her want to drag him back in, whether Sam was awake or not.

He was just locking the door behind them when Nancy put his hand on his. "Oh God, I-- I left something."

When she came back out, Ned was waiting with Sam in the hallway, and Nancy was just pushing her wedding rings back onto her left ring finger. He raised an eyebrow at her, his mouth falling open slightly.

"Yeah," she said. "Okay, we're good now."

When they were in his car Nancy tugged her rings back off and held them loosely in her right hand, reaching for Ned's. He laced his fingers between hers and glanced at her, in the dim glow of a stoplight. He didn't say anything. She didn't trust herself to speak.

At the check-in counter she just gazed at him. Sam was awake, far too awake, and Nancy's rings were back on, and she couldn't say goodbye to him the way she wanted, which definitely involved far more privacy.

"Okay," she said. "Thanks-- for the ride, and the coffee."

"You're welcome," Ned replied. "Maybe we'll see each other again soon. I'll... why don't you call me, when you're free to talk."

_What do you want to say,_ she wanted to ask. _Do you want to say it all over again, now that we both know that what you said meant nothing?_ Instead she smiled at him, nodding, reaching for his hand, but faster than either of them could realize he was reaching for her. The mingled scent of cologne and aftershave and sex and then he was pulling back and soft color was staining her cheeks.

_I love you,_ she mouthed to him, quick, her heart beating heavily in her chest.

He nodded in wordless agreement.


	9. Chapter 9

Callie Shaw still was not married.

A year before, that fact had made Nancy vaguely uneasy. As far as Nancy could tell from the carefully scrutinized cards, Callie had no steady boyfriend either. She still lived near Bayport. She was still great friends with Joe and Vanessa.

Ned had not remained great friends with Bess and George after Nancy left. According to Bess, he had only reappeared on the cousins' radar after he and Nancy had unexpectedly run into each other at the grocery store. They lived on opposite sides of Chicago, but still.

As far as Nancy knew, Callie had never stopped talking to Frank.

When the yearly card came in the mail, Nancy opened it and a faint dusting of silver-white glitter fell over her fingers and to the carpet. Callie did, despite any other shortcomings, have good taste in cards. Nancy never displayed them anywhere, though, because Callie wrote long messages inside, in hard blue and long looped strokes, messages which contained absolutely nothing of value but Frank read them anyway, and smiled, and shoved them back into the shredded envelopes.

On the last unseasonably warm day Nancy took Sam to the park, and while Sam bubbled on about everything she had managed to accomplish in the morning Nancy felt her gaze drawn to a solitary figure walking a dog, there at the edge, in a dark hooded sweatshirt. A strand of blond hair fluttering at the edge. Long shapely legs. She showed absolutely no interest in either Sam or Nancy.

Then she pushed back the hood and brought a cell phone to her ear, said a few short phrases, laughed, and hung up.

Callie.

Maybe a girl who just looked like Callie.

Sam tugged impatiently at her mother's sleeve and Nancy looked down at her daughter, into Sam's scowling face. "I heard you," Nancy lied, stealing a glance back in the girl's direction. She was vanishing around a corner, the hood back up, her hair hidden again.

When Nancy's own cell phone began to ring, her stomach filled with ice. "Frank?"

"Hey," he said. "I'm going to be a few hours late tonight, but keep dinner warm for me, okay?"

\--

"When are you going to be in town again?"

"Don't know," Nancy said. "This year it's his parents' for Thanksgiving and River Heights for Christmas, but I doubt that's what you had in mind. All depends on the next time he's called off to save the world."

He didn't speak for a moment. "We need to talk, about," he said, and trailed off.

"About what happened?"

"Not so much about what happened," Ned replied. "It's done. It's what's going to happen that I'm worried about."

Nancy checked on Sam, who was happily coloring, and shut herself outside on the deck. "You don't need to be worried," she told him. "It was. And, if we, if we do decide," she began, and clenched her eyes tight shut, willing the words out, "if you say that we need to stay away from each other, then we'll try that again. No more unexpected visits to your apartment."

"I want to see you again."

"I want to see you again too," she admitted, her breath coming out in a rush, the relief palpable. "As soon as you can. Tonight. But." She ran her hand through her hair. "You probably have another girlfriend by now."

"I think I'm going to put that off," he said. "Suspend the search indefinitely. If you."

Nancy's breath caught. "If I what?"

"If you--"

A pair of headlight beams swept across the lawn as Frank pulled into their driveway, and Nancy's heart seized in her chest. "Oh God, he's here, I'll call you later," she said, and snapped the phone shut quickly, then walked back into the house. Sam was already looking at the front door, her crayon in midair, a smile beginning to light her face. Nancy put her phone down on the counter and walked over to the refrigerator, pulled open the door and let the cooler air bathe her flushed cheeks.

"I'm home," Frank called from the door, and Nancy sighed, building the smile she would have to force until she could find some time apart again.

Sam covered the silence Nancy couldn't find it in herself to fill. Nancy was constantly walking back and forth between the kitchen and dining room, for drink refills or extra napkins or anything she could think of, staring at her phone and almost wishing it would ring, staring at the lake gently shimmering at the edge of their yard. Seeing Sam with Frank was almost painful. Frank leaned in close to her, listening carefully to everything she said, smiling down at her. Attentive.

If she managed to snatch his cell phone, would she find Callie's number in the history?

Nancy looked at her own phone, her heart in her throat, and deleted Ned's number from the call history. She hadn't programmed it into her phone, but Frank was a detective. Cell phone numbers were easy enough to trace.

"You okay?"

Frank had his and Sam's plates in his hand, and was standing at the kitchen door, gazing at her, but he was smiling faintly. No accusation in his manner.

"Fine," Nancy said, fighting the urge to avoid looking into his eyes. She brushed her hair back and took the plates out of his hand. "Sorry, I was just thinking about something."

"What?"

He said it lightly enough, and she answered in the same tone, "I could have sworn I saw Callie Shaw walking in the park today."

Frank smiled. "Maybe you did, the weather was gorgeous."

"It was," Nancy agreed, and he went back into the dining room, and Nancy leaned over the kitchen counter with her head in her hands.

\--

When she woke, Frank was already gone.

Nancy rubbed her hands over her face. Sam was making noise in her bedroom. Some chirping electronic voice with chimes and bells, an old and long-forgotten toy unearthed by the move. When Nancy passed her room on the way to the kitchen, Sam was wearing a jacket over her pajamas and shiny black Mary Janes on her bare feet.

On the way back from Sam's preschool, Nancy stopped by a gas station for a pack of cigarettes.

Even though Ned's business card had his work number on it, the thought of calling him there was too much, and interrupting him by calling his cell phone was just as bad. He knew her schedule. Maybe, if Frank didn't make an unexpected visit...

She had given Ned an anonymous email address. When she checked it, before composing a message for him to call her if he took an early lunch, she found a message already waiting.

_I couldn't stop thinking about you last night._

Nancy went out on the back deck and chain-smoked two cigarettes. The wind coming off the lake snatched the smoke away and chilled her through her thin t-shirt, but she sat anyway, and even though her mind was racing, when she caught it she found there was nothing there at all. No resolve or plan.

Just the knowledge that she wanted to see Ned again, and the knowledge that if Frank found out he would probably fight for sole custody of their daughter. In the inevitable absence of her father, Sam would be raised by Nancy's mother-in-law, probably to hate her. Frank made the money in their household. Frank had the financial means to support her. Nancy had less than nothing. The house was in his name. His name was on Sam's birth certificate.

Nancy's stomach clenched as she thought of how easy the idea had seemed, those years ago, to make another phone call, to tell a tiny lie. It would have been so easy.

But it was done. Ned was right. She had made her choice, and it wasn't him.

_If you can manage to call me, please do,_ she wrote, the scent of cigarettes still clinging to her skin. _I have to pick up Sam at noon._

She was waiting at a stoplight at eleven forty-six and he still hadn't called. Her spirits were abysmally low. Fourteen minutes was no time at all.

Her phone rang and she snatched it from the seat, answering it before the first ring ended. "Hey," she greeted him, breathless.

"Sorry, I couldn't get away until now," he apologized. "You're alone?"

"For another," she checked her watch, "thirteen minutes. I don't," she began to explain, then stopped. "I'm sorry. I miss you."

He chuckled, low, but there was no humor in it. "We have to stop this," he told her. "I know that. But I can't not see you, and when I do..."

She smiled. "I know," she said softly.

\--

"I made a picture for daddy."

"You did?" Nancy asked, in the soft abstracted way, sorting through their movie collection to find the one Sam had requested. "What is it?"

"It's a surprise," Sam said.

"Oh," Nancy said. "Well, you think maybe I could look at it?"

Sam made a face, but her eyes were bright, and Nancy smiled.

"I was just wondering," Nancy said, elaborately casual, "since I know you always draw the best pictures. They're so beautiful."

Sam giggled in pleasure. "You can see it," she said, and went through her bookbag. Then she paused, looking back at her mother. "But just for a minute, okay?"

"Okay," Nancy agreed, pulling out the movie.

When Sam brought her the picture, she saw Ned, through Sam's eyes. Brown and black, his hair and the leather jacket, the simple shallow U of his smile. "Tell me about your picture," Nancy asked.

"This is a man," Sam said, pointing. Then she indicated an orange blur at one end of the picture. "And this is a cat."

"It's a great picture, Sam," Nancy told her daughter. "I have an idea. Do you want to go see Hannah for the weekend, while Daddy's out of town?"

Sam was carefully putting her picture back into her bookbag. "With kittens?"

"She might have some more kittens by now," Nancy agreed mildly. Her fingers were trembling against the remote control. "I want to go see Aunt Bess and Aunt George and you can stay with Hannah for a little while, okay?"

"We can't play dress-up again?"

"Maybe we can," Nancy said. "So it's settled."

Sam nodded, in her exaggerated way, and Nancy laughed despite the rising tremor in her veins.

\--

"You're really out of it tonight, Drew."

Nancy sighed, adjusting the strap of her tank top under her leather jacket. "Sorry," she said faintly. "It's just, I think Frank might be cheating on me."

George had been lining up her shot. At Nancy's muttered explanation she stood to her full height again, the cue forgotten on the edge of the table. "What?"

Bess returned and handed Nancy another drink, then looked back and forth between her cousin and her friend. "What?"

When George's gaze didn't blink or waver, Bess turned back to Nancy, who dropped her own. "I don't know," she said. "I just have this feeling that he's been seeing Callie."

Bess was the first to speak. "I wasn't going to bring this up, but what happened the night of the reunion?"

"Can we wait on talking about this until we're somewhere else?" Nancy said, and took a long sip of her drink to hide the flush in her cheeks.

"I knew it," George said, her voice low, but not without a trace of humor. "You stole my date, didn't you."

"Please," Nancy begged. "Just not right now. We can go back to your place and talk about this but, not here," she said, gesturing at the smoky floor, the overpainted girls and half-drunk guys.

"Don't give me another drink, I'm holding her to it," George told her cousin, and leaned down again to complete her turn.

Bess looked at Nancy. "Okay," she sighed. "Too bad there aren't four of us, we could play spades."

Nancy shrugged with false ease. "Call Ned," she suggested. "I'm sure he's in town."

George walked around the table to take her next shot. "Get her another drink," she told Bess. "This I have to see."

\--

She could tell from the expression in Ned's eyes that he'd had a few drinks before Bess's call. After George had buzzed him up and Bess had answered the door, they set eyes on each other for the first time in what felt like years, and Nancy couldn't bring herself to disguise the naked hunger in her gaze.

"You remember how to play spades, Nickerson?"

"Nice place," he said, glancing around, before answering. "I'm sure I can fake it."

When Ned took Nancy up on her offer of a beer, Bess raced her to the kitchen, where she hissed, "_Nothing_ happened the night of the reunion?"

Nancy shook her head, her eyes wide. "Nothing happened," she repeated. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I swear to you."

Bess accepted her answer, but pouted. "I could swear," she began, looking at Nancy's face, but didn't finish.

They played with their old partners. Nancy and Ned facing each other across the table, Bess and George next to them, and it all came back, their old code and winks and protests over cheating and betting and sandbagging and objections over Bess keeping the score. After another drink George good-naturedly ribbed Ned about deserting her at the reunion, and he bumped her shoulder as he apologized, but when he caught Nancy's gaze the expression in his eyes was for her alone.

"You gonna be okay to drive?" Bess asked, finishing off her drink.

"I took a cab," Ned explained. "I was in a bar when you called me."

"We should hang out more often," Bess said, and the rest of the table nodded in alcohol-slowed agreement. "I forgot how much fun it was, with you guys."

Nancy could feel the same nervous energy rising in her as the hours wore on, as the cousins started saying that they would only play one more hand before turning in for the night. She kept staring at Ned's mouth, wondering if the imprints of her fingernails were still in his skin, if she would agree should he suggest that they take a cab somewhere.

George was the last to stumble off to bed with a wordless wave, the television still humming some slow raucous comedy show in the background, Nancy and Ned relaxing a safe distance from each other on the couch. The lights were dim and when he stared at her, she couldn't manage to speak.

He reached out and pushed a strand of hair out of her face. "Where are you staying tonight?" he asked softly.

Nancy shrugged, returning his faint smile. "Sam's with Hannah for the night, and George let me have the couch last time I was here."

The corner of his mouth curved up a little higher. "Hmm," he said. "I think I can do better."

\--

Her rings were already at the last joint of her finger when he unlocked his door, and he swept her off her feet, the metal clinking faintly as it fell to the hardwood, his mouth on hers again. There were a thousand things they needed to say to each other. She couldn't remember a single word, not when she had been fighting herself to keep from attacking him during the cab ride over, not when he was pulling her tank top over her head, not when his hands were all over her.

They bumped into everything in the dark, laughing between the kisses, the couch and the coffee table and the door of his bedroom, the bed itself, and then she was staring at him in the bare faint light, speechless, her palm cupped against his cheek. His fingers. She was breathless and when he kissed her, it was all satisfied, every word she hadn't yet found herself able to say, every misgiving and doubt.

"You want me still."

"Yes."

She couldn't stop. It wasn't an option anymore. She kissed him, rocking into him, against him, the slow pale delicate curve of her inner thigh as she wrapped around him. His fingers around her wrist, pinning her half beneath him, her mouth wet and raw from his kiss, his fingers pressing into her breast. When she shifted in the dark, gasping, he followed her, pinning her beneath him, rolling onto his back as she straddled his waist, on their sides facing each other with their limbs tangled and trembling with each slow thrust. She whimpered when he slipped gentle fingers between them, stroking, slow and firm, and the first tear slipped out of her eye as she moaned, kissing him as she began to feel it, the trembling edge of her release.

"Ned," she cried out, against his mouth, and he rolled over onto her, into her, her legs wrapping around his waist and drawing him in close. Her breath came in harsh gasps against his chest and she tilted her head back, and when his rhythm shifted she groaned, her hips rising to meet his. They rolled over again, still joined, and she ran her hands through her hair, tossed it back and matched his thrusts with the grind of her hips into his. She could only breathe in pained, desperate gasps. His hands at her waist, against her hips, urging her, forcing her against him, until her hips were flush against his. She cried out, her palms supporting her weight against his shoulders, her fingernails digging into his skin, and he groaned.

He sat up and pressed her to the mattress, to her back, in one smooth quick motion, his thrusts short and hard between her sweat-dampened thighs, her head hanging off the edge of his bed, and she screamed then. He leaned down, his chest to hers, slipped his hand up to cradle the base of her skull, to draw her face to his shoulder, her teeth needling gentle against his neck as he groaned with her first spasm.

"I love you," he gasped, and she was tight and wet against him, her inner flesh stroking his erection in tensed spasms. She was desperate, pleading, her fingernails raking down the back of his neck, his shoulder blades, his back in long streaks of exquisite pain.

"Oh God, oh God," she whimpered. "I love you, I love you so much, I've always loved you, oh my God, please, please..."

He stilled as he came, trembling with the force of it, pressing his lips in a motionless kiss against her forehead. His fingers sliding through the silk strands of her hair. He kissed her mouth and then pulled back, from between her thighs, her brow still furrowed in the irresistible concentration of her release.

"You," he whispered, his voice almost breaking. "I've never."

She blinked, opened her eyes. Smiled at him. "Tell me I'm the best you've ever had," she whispered, bringing her hand up to cup his cheek. Her breasts brushing against his chest.

"You are," he whispered, and then wrapped his arms around her, pulled her up with him so that she was straddling his lap and he was looking up at her, in the dim dark of his bedroom. "You're the best I'll ever have."

"You lie," she whispered, still flushed faintly with pleasure, and he took her face in his hands and drew her down to him for a kiss. When she pulled back, he shook his head.

"I swore to myself I wouldn't do this," he whispered. His eyelashes dark against his cheek.

"What," she whispered, stroking the line of his jaw.

His smile was bittersweet. "You aren't mine, not anymore," he whispered.

She returned the smile, her eyes filling with tears. "Why didn't I call you, the day I found out," she said, tracing her fingers down, feeling his pulse hard beneath his skin. "Why didn't I."

He traced his thumb over her slightly parted lips. "Nan." She gazed at him, and when he pulled himself under the covers she followed, trembling slightly, suddenly cold without the heat of his skin against hers.

When he slept, exhausted, their sweat mingled on his skin, he still held her. He still didn't stop touching her. She loved him for it, in the stillness. She loved him for the soft hair at the back of his neck and the way he touched her when she was bare and vulnerable beneath him, the concern and the desire in his warm brown eyes. The rightness of it. This was the way making love was supposed to feel, supposed to be. This was what she had denied herself.

She slept fitfully, and when she woke he was staring at her, smiling, stroking her cheek.

"I wish we could wake up like this every day for the rest of our lives," he whispered.

She put her hand over his and held it against her skin, searching his eyes. "Ned," she breathed.

His smile turned bittersweet and then he was leaning over the side of the bed, pulling on his boxers. "Want some breakfast? I think I have some cereal. Maybe pancake mix if you're lucky."

"Whatever you want," she said softly. Her heart was a painful weight in her as she watched him walk through the door, out of her sight. Only then did she reach over the edge of the bed and hastily dress.

She walked out in his robe, and his only comment on her appearance was a soft smile. She waited until he was bent over the stove to kneel down and pick up her rings again, slip them into her pocket. She walked up behind him and put her arm around his waist, looking down at the skillet, where perfect golden pancakes were hissing.

"Let's have breakfast in bed," she suggested.

\--

The very tips of her hair were damp and curling slightly over her shoulders from their shower as she walked into Hannah's house. Sam ran to her mother and wrapped her arms around her leg, until Nancy reached down and swept her up. "Thank you so much."

Hannah gazed at Nancy, her eyes sharp, but she smiled. "I tried to call you a few times," she said. "You three partying last night?"

Nancy smiled. "Yeah, a few drinks, some cards, that was about it," she said, and kissed Sam on the forehead, brushing her hair back. "Sorry. Sometimes I can't hear my phone when I leave it in my jacket."

"You on the way to the airport now?"

Nancy dipped her head. "Sam doesn't want to miss school, does she," she said, and Sam nodded vigorously, smiling.

Hannah smiled back. "Don't be a stranger."

On the plane Nancy put her fingertips against the oval of the window until they were numb with the cold. He hadn't said. He never said. She had left him with no promises, just a long hard crush of an embrace when she was already twenty minutes late leaving, but she couldn't bring herself to care about anything else than the sensation of him breathing, in and out, ruffling her hair gently, his fingers curled around her arm. She hated saying goodbye. She hated the hard look in his eyes when she slipped her rings back onto her finger.

A long time ago, a lifetime ago, his fingers trailing idly over her skin. "One day we won't have to say goodbye to each other anymore," he'd said, and smiled, and she had smiled, but the idea was too perfect to even imagine.

"I love you."

How could she promise him anything else, with Sam by her side. How could she promise Ned anything. Even as they lay in each other's arms, not moving, and she could still feel the trails of his fingers burning on her skin after each caress.

"Did you have fun with Hannah?" Nancy asked her daughter.

Sam nodded. "I had fun," she said. "Read me the book?"

"Sure," Nancy replied.

\--

"You're beautiful."

Frank was treating her like they'd had a fight, walking on slivered eggshells, conciliatory. For the first time in a very long time she had told him she had a headache, instead of waiting with her breath held and the rising nausea sharp against the back of her throat. But she couldn't give in to him, not when she remembered the bittersweet smile on Ned's face. She looked down at Sam and she wanted a cigarette.

Instead she smiled vaguely at her husband. "Thanks."

He sighed, but not unhappily. He had done his duty for the day. She could no longer be angry with him if he'd paid her such a compliment. That was how it went in his head.

It didn't matter.

For the entirety of their relationship they had had Sam, and when Nancy was angry at Frank it was over their daughter, something he had done, something he had not done for her. For Sam's sake. Because Sam defined the two of them and everything they had in common and he had the accounts and the money and...

_If I leave._

Frank's back. He was walking into the kitchen and she hadn't slept the night before. They had lay frozen side by side in the bed he'd bought, in the house he'd bought, with the daughter he'd provided for. He had never set out to keep her this way. This had never been what he'd wanted, what they had wanted. But now she was here, waiting, counting the seconds until she heard his next excuse, her next opportunity to call Ned, to hear Ned's voice, to speak to him, to see him, to. God. _If I leave. If I leave._

_I want to see you,_ his last message had said, and she had gone out on the deck and smoked another cigarette and buried it in the trash once she came back in. Holidays. Christmas day with her father and her husband and her daughter, twelve hours of cooking and a football game and wrapping paper all over the floor and excuses to walk out, ways to leave them, for the five minutes she could safely spend in a grocery store, a parking lot, long enough to catch a few words before she was back frozen and silent in Frank's bed.

Or she could. Or she could.

Sam vanished into the kitchen after her father, and Nancy closed her eyes, listening to the soft indistinguishable hum of their voices, and her blood was sick with heavy thick cement and her throat was full of it. Sam. Even half a father, even half a father.

_I need to see you._

I _need,_ she thought, and the tears rose in her eyes too fast to push them back.


	10. Chapter 10

"Are you all right?"

"I'm okay."

"Are you going to be able to call me later?"

He tried to disguise it. He tried to soften it. But years of learning him, inside and out, meant that it was all transparent to her now. "I don't know," she said. "Don't, don't stay awake or anything, I just..."

Ned laughed softly. "I know you'll stay awake," she said, soft, teasing. She dropped her voice, even more softly. "I love you."

"I love you."

She stood motionless for two minutes after hanging up the phone, her shoulders set. Sam was asleep, tired from the plane ride from his parents' back to their house on the edge of the lake, drowsed with turkey and stuffing and macaroni and cheese.

Frank was unpacking his suitcase, in his shorts. His hair was tousled. He had dumped the dirty clothes out of his suitcase and into a laundry basket, and was repacking with new, fresh clothes.

Another assignment.

"I'm sick of this," she said, aloud, without even meaning to speak. Frank looked up at her and Nancy could only hold his gaze for a moment before dropping it. She put her hand on his to still it. "I'm so sick of this."

"Of what," he said.

She sat down on the bed and ran her hands through her hair, trembling all the way down to her bones. "We never finish any of our conversations."

He held a pair of tube socks, matched and rolled, in his hand. He looked down at them vaguely, dropped them into the suitcase, then shoved it to the side and sat down next to her. "We finish conversations all the time."

"No we don't," she said, quiet but insistent. "How can we finish anything when I never know if you'll be here tomorrow."

"We've been over this."

"You were never meant to be married."

The realization dawned, then. The slow look in his eyes. "Are you unhappy, Nan," he said faintly.

She started twisting her engagement and wedding rings around her finger, over and over. "I've been unhappy for three years," she said. "Since the day I figured out that this," she said, gesturing at his half-full suitcase, "this isn't a job for you, or a hobby. This is your life. This is who you are and what you do, and when you are, there's no space left for me. No time. The further away you go, the less space I have, to move, to breathe, to do anything."

"Nan," he said, and reached for her hand.

She let his hand rest on hers, passive. Not acknowledging. Not denying. "Frank," she said, and looked at him, looked straight and full into his face for the first time in the longest time. "You're not a bad person. You're so kind and so gentle and so, so good," she said, and sighed, tears rising in her eyes. "When you're here, you are a good father. You are. And you do try. And you do want to be," she said. "But I didn't ask you to be half a father, I told you I was pregnant because I thought you deserved the chance to be her full time father. But you aren't."

"What do you want me to do?"

She could see pain in his eyes. She pulled her hand out from under his and his hand slipped to her knee.

"Let me go," she told him, the first tear streaking down her cheek. "Let us go."

He started, then, as though he had been shot, the blood draining from his face. "Sam?"

Nancy ran her hand through her hair and nodded. "I need some time," she said. "I want you to say I can go to Chicago and stay with my father for a while and we can think about this."

Frank's face was hardening into a mask, but not an unkind one. "What about Christmas," he breathed. "What about, with, everyone."

She smiled, humorless, sad. "We can talk again, then," she said quietly. "In River Heights."

He looked down at his hands. At anything else. "When," he said.

"Tomorrow," Nancy said softly. "Tomorrow, I'll take her. They have a space available. In Chicago. They can, she can go there for, until..."

He reached out for her, his fingers against her upper arm, and she could feel it, the soft slow spark she had once sworn to Ned she would never act on again, but it found no answer in her. "Nancy," he said, and his voice broke.

"Frank, I'm sorry," she said. "I swear, I'm so sorry. I never meant for this to happen. And I've tried, I've tried so hard," she said, and she buried her face in her hands, gasping in sobs. "The pills helped for a while, Sam was enough for a while..."

"Pills?"

They talked. They talked for hours, and for the first time in years he was listening. He had never known about the pills in the Midol bottle. He had never known how lonely she was.

"And Callie? Was it Callie that day in the park?" Nancy finally asked, the last twinge of jealousy rising in her.

Frank bowed his head. "We talk, Nan," he said. "She-- I know she still has feelings for me, but, we have lunch, we talk, she's my friend. You know that."

"I thought it could be," she began, and looked down at her own hands, a small self-depricating smile on her face. "And that's all."

Frank nodded. "Everything happened, so suddenly," he said. "Back then, with Sam. You say we never finish any conversations but I feel like she and I have never said goodbye, either. Maybe that was wrong of me." He looked away.

She put her arms around him, then. "It's not wrong," she said gently. "Frank, I do care about you, so much, but this... this is not how it was supposed to be."

"Because I'm gone all the time."

She smiled, sadly. "We're the same," she told him. "Don't you see, if not you it would be me. But we have Sam, and as much as I care for you, this isn't ever what I wanted for her."

"I wanted to give her everything," Frank said simply. "You do know that."

Nancy nodded. "I know. That's what I wanted too."

\--

To Sam, it was just another trip.

Frank gave Sam the longest hug, and so many kisses, so many promises that he would see her again soon. But they had decided, during that long sleepless night, to not make a big deal out of it. Sam traveled so much that this was just another visit to her grandfather.

"I love you, Sam," Frank told her, in the middle of the busy terminal. He was still taking his flight out, and Nancy had not wavered on her decision to leave. When he asked her, with hope still standing in his eyes, to reassure him, tell him it was all temporary, just a small break, she just gave him the same sad little smile.

She released a long breath and took off the rings, made to hand them to him, but he refused them, folding her fingers around them. "Keep them," he said. "Until I see you again."

She sighed. "Okay," she whispered, and patted him on the shoulder, her lower lip trembling. "Be safe, all right?"

He nodded. "Love you."

Sam waved as they walked out of Frank's sight.

\--

"You okay?"

Nancy put her head on her father's shoulder. Sam went to bed easily enough, in her mother's old room, absolutely nothing off or wrong in her world. Carson put his arm around her shoulder and Nancy felt herself, finally, start to cry, after a day of putting up a brave face for Sam. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the rings, handed them to her father.

"Put them in a safe place," she told him through her sobs. "Until, until I can give them back to him..."

Carson hugged his daughter. "It's okay," he said. "It's going to be okay, baby."

She put her arms around him. "He still doesn't understand," she whispered. "He doesn't. In a month he's going to come here, and I just know he'll ask me if I'm ready to come back home yet, but, I can't, Dad..."

"Then you can't," he said, reassuring, rubbing his palm over her back. "Stay here as long as you need to."

He only went to bed after she assured him that she would be all right, she only needed warm milk, the quiet lull of the television set, white noise to make her sleep, to bring her oblivion. She watched infomercials without seeing them, wrapped in her bathrobe, her cheeks rubbed raw and red, salt dried hard on her skin.

Sam would be going to school in the morning. Nancy stared, uncomprehending, at the clock on the cable box. It was late, so late. She reached up and swiped at her eyes with the edge of her sleeve. Wondered if Frank was sleepless, wherever he was tonight.

Wondered.

She went into the kitchen and splashed cold water on her face until the flush was fading, the tears washed off her skin. She scrawled her cell phone number on a scrap of paper and stuck it to the refrigerator door with a magnet. She took her cell phone out onto the front porch and called a cab, after she had dressed and brushed her hair and kissed her sleeping daughter's cheek.

When Ned answered his door, Nancy was rubbing her bare left ring finger.

"Hey," she said. "Um. I've. I left him. I left my husband."

All he did was reach for her, pull her inside with him into his dark apartment, closing the door behind her. He put his arms around her and held her to him and she closed her eyes, breathed him in. The room was still, cool.

"What are you going to do," he asked.

"Stay with my dad," she told him, her face against his shoulder. "Until we figure everything out."

"Are you... are you doing okay?" he asked, hesitant.

"I'm okay," she said. Then she smiled. "I'm here. I'm okay."

They walked hand in hand to his bedroom, and it started to catch up with her, the fatigue and the exhaustion. She felt drained and heavy as she climbed in with him, into his arms.

"Ned."

His hand on her side, palm over her stomach, fingers curling under the hem of her shirt, against her skin. "When do you have to leave," he said. Then he smiled. "Do you have to leave."

"I have to take Sam to school in the morning," Nancy said, apologetically. "And I need to get home before Dad wakes up and starts wondering where I've gone."

He nuzzled against her cheek, and she reached up to trace her fingertips down the line of his jaw. "Ned, I love you."

"I love you too," he whispered. He pressed a kiss against her ear. "Promise me one day we'll stop having to say goodbye to each other."

"I promise," she whispered.


	11. epilogue

On that day force of habit led her to follow the old way. She took a cab to a department store, walked through to the back and out again, down a block to a restaurant. The second cab dropped her off at a bar, and she walked through that one, her hands plunged into her pockets, through the bustling kitchen to the back. She lengthened her stride and the block to the apartment building went quickly. She wore a long blue woolen scarf wrapped snug around her neck and the wind whipped the sudden shining tears on her cheeks into mist.

The key was marked only with an initial. She took the stairs up, slowly, knowing she would find it empty. Sure enough, when the lock clicked back the door opened on a dark, still apartment. She walked inside, very quietly, the blue fade into twilight turning the furniture into indeterminate shadow.

A doll in one of the recliners, from Sam's last visit. She hadn't meant to leave it. Nancy swept it up into her arms and went into the kitchen, found a tall glass, dropped in a handful of ice cubes. Half amber liquid, half soda. She made a face when she swallowed the first mouthful, but the tears were shocked into submission by it. She took the soda and the glass to the coffee table and sat listening to the low mournful stereo, waiting for the deadbolt to click back again.

Today wasn't supposed to have been like this.

She shrugged out of her coat and finished her drink, the flush high in her cheeks. The warm haze expanded in her, until it overwhelmed the incoherent shock. She had no idea why she felt this way. No idea why she had come here still taking such care to make sure she wasn't followed.

The deadbolt clicked back and she put her feet on the floor, side by side, in front of her, but she couldn't stop herself from turning to meet his eyes as he walked in.

"Nan? You scared the hell..."

She pulled herself to her feet and came to him, and he tossed his coat and briefcase into a chair and opened his arms to pull her into them. Her eyes were welling, but gently, not enough to fall.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, I should have called."

"Or at least turned on the lights," he said, and she could hear the smile in his voice as he rested his head against her shoulder. "Something's wrong?"

She drew in a long breath and pulled back to look into his face, running her fingers over his cheeks. She leaned forward and their lips met in a slow, sweet, perfect kiss, her arms around his shoulders.

"The papers are signed," she said. "It's official."

He pulled her up until her feet were off the floor and kissed her again, hard. "I thought it wasn't until next week," he said, searching her eyes once he pulled back.

"Wasn't supposed to be," she said. "He was in town. He signed, it's settled, Dad will file them but as far as the law's concerned..."

"This calls for a drink," Ned said, kissing her again. "You taste like you've already started."

Nancy gave him a lopsided smile. "I had one," she admitted.

He put her down and started toward the kitchen, his fingertips trailing down the back of her arm, but as they touched hers he turned back, concern in his gaze. "You okay?"

"Yeah," she said, running her other hand over her face, following him into the kitchen. "I'm okay. I just... wasn't ready for it yet. I'm divorced. Frank has alternating holidays with our daughter. I haven't even been to my ten-year high school reunion, and I'm divorced."

"How do you feel?"

"Sad. Relieved," she admitted. "And now we can go on dates in public."

"After a suitable time period, of course," Ned said, a trace of laughter in his voice as he quoted her father's words back to her. "Although if you moved in with me tonight, I wouldn't mind." He looped an arm around her waist and pulled her to him, dropped a kiss on the crown of her head.

"Do you mean that," she said softly, putting her hand over his and lacing her fingers between. He filled a glass but she stopped him before he could pick it up, stilling his hand under hers, and when he turned to her she boosted herself up onto the counter, their faces level. "Ned, there's... something I've needed to say to you for a long time."

He laced his fingers between hers, traced his thumbs over the back of her hands, waiting, his brown eyes warm on hers.

"I made a mistake," she said quietly. "I love you more than anything but I gave in to that, that little spark, that attraction, and I found out I was pregnant. And I didn't come to you. I didn't explain and apologize and beg your forgiveness, I just thought it would be easier to never tell you. I didn't want to see the look on your face. I didn't want to know you were disappointed in me and I knew you would be. I thought you might hate me. I thought if I came to you then that you would shut me out of your life forever, and it was easier... Ned, I always thought you would be my first, and in a way you were," she said, and glanced up into his eyes, her lower lip trembling, the first tear streaking down her cheek. "I owe you more than I've ever given you, for not walking out of my life the second you walked back into it, knowing what you did. I should never have married him, but he was her father. He will be her father for the rest of her life, but she doesn't know him the way she should, and now she never will. I've tried... I've been trying to make the best of this. With you I finally feel like I have a chance to be happy. Even if..." She ran her hands through her hair, pushing it back, her eyes red. "No matter what happens between us after this," she said. "No matter what, I'm not going back to him. Sam is the most important person in my life, and she... and she's not yours. I love her so much, and I did this because I thought it was best for her, I married him and I left him for her, not just, not just because Frank is gone so much, but because I don't want to show her what life is like when there's nothing else to live for. I want her to have a happy mother. And you make me happy. And I guess what I'm asking you is, for a little while, for now... whether you think you'll be able to answer that question I should have asked you four years ago. Whether you'll take me back, even though I've screwed up so very, very badly. I know this isn't the way things were supposed to be for us. I'm sorrier than you can ever know, for that. But this is what we have now, this is who we are, and... I'm just trying to make things right."

He searched her eyes for a long moment. The album ended and the ice shifted in the glass and everything was silent around them.

"Ned, say something," she whispered. "Even if it's just that you need time." She smiled sadly. "I can give you time. I can give you space. Whatever you need."

"I need you," he said. "All of you."

"Even Sam?" she said, rubbing her palms over her tearstained cheeks, his hands resting on either side of her hips. "We're a package deal, after all. Two for the price of one."

"I know," he said softly, and pressed a kiss against her cheek. "Both of you. I need you and Sam in my life. I need a gorgeous brilliant detective in my life, and her beautiful little daughter."

She smiled, then, slowly, and took his breath away.

\--

Samantha was their flower girl.

Nancy's first wedding had been small, witnessed only by family and friends who were aware of her situation. Her second was outdoors, in the spring, when everything was bright and green again. She had been a divorcée for a year and Ned had given her a diamond for Christmas.

When Sam walked up the path in front of her mother, distributing the petals as she had been painstakingly taught, she reached the altar and stopped in front of Ned and held her hands up in wordless request, and he swept Frank's daughter into his arms and dropped a kiss onto her gleaming hair before Hannah took her.

Nancy was in cream-colored silk with a sage-green sash knotted around her waist, her hair piled on top of her head, carrying blush-pink roses, her skirt falling just below her knees, barefoot. Ned couldn't take his eyes off her.

She took his arm and Sam clapped from Hannah's lap.

Nancy had spent the previous night on the phone with Ned until they were both on the point of exhaustion, Sam asleep in Nancy's arms, in the apartment they would soon give up. Ned and Nancy and Sam would be moving into the house Ned had just bought, on the lake, once they came back from their honeymoon. Nancy and Sam had been on their own for a year, with her father and Hannah's help, Nancy working part-time at the newspaper and stealing hours, nights, with Ned. Lazy Sunday afternoons while the three of them watched movies and Ned surprised Sam with little presents and tickle fights and arms to sleep in.

"Why doesn't he go away?" Sam asked once, and Nancy, blinking back the beginning of tears, explained that Ned becoming her stepfather didn't mean he would leave like Frank had.

Her hand, ringless for a year, warm in his as he said the words. His vows were different. Her first wedding had been so swift that there had been no time for anything other than traditional vows, conventional cake and punch and a wedding dress cut generously to disguise their daughter from view, and Frank's solemn face in the pictures. But Ned couldn't stop smiling, and she couldn't stop touching him, her fingers laced between his as they faced the minister for the pronouncement.

He was hers.

She had believed it impossible. She'd never known such sinking desperation as she had during her pregnancy, the final dawning knowledge that she'd crossed the unforgivable line and destroyed any future with the man she loved. But he was here, now, in spite of everything.

"I love you."

Hannah had been working on their wedding feast for days. The tiered cake, in green fondant and pink icing; meatballs and croissant sandwiches and petit fours and fruit trays. She had outdone herself. It had to be Ned, Nancy knew; Hannah had always had a soft spot for him and his boundless appetite for her cooking. Nancy paused over the chocolate groom's cake and returned Ned's wide grin.

"I love you too," she said. "And judging from all this, Hannah loves you almost as much."

Sam came up to the table in her floating white dress, a garland of flowers and pink ribbon in her hair, reaching for a petit four before Ned swept her up into his arms again and she giggled. "Having fun, little girl?"

Sam nodded, grinning. "Will you dance with me?"

"I guess so," Ned said in mock reluctance and resignation. "If your mom says it's okay."

"Don't tire him out," Nancy told her daughter. "We have a long trip and he needs to be awake for it."

"You're going to be gone a whole _week_?" Sam pouted. "Can I stay home from school?"

"No," Nancy said, laughing. "Grandpa will take you."

"O_kay_," Sam groaned, and started squirming. When Ned put her down she grabbed his hand and tugged on it hard, until she was leaning forward. "Dance now."

"You do take after your mom," Ned said, reaching over to loop an arm around Nancy's waist and bring her to him for a kiss before he allowed Sam to drag him away.

\--

In a way life had been easier when she slept over at Ned's place, before they were married. With Sam asleep and safe at her father's house, Nancy and Ned could make out on his couch, tease each other until one of them broke and dragged the other to the bedroom, but those mornings were always rushed, pressed kisses at his front door and promises of calls and dinners and dates.

She wouldn't have gone back to it for worlds, though.

Ned kissed her slowly, and she stretched underneath him, her arms loose around his shoulders. "Love you," she sighed.

"Love you too," he whispered, tracing his lips down her cheek, nuzzling against her neck. She pushed him onto his side and turned to face him, her arm bent up under his, the tips of their noses touching. "Did you say you had something to tell me?"

She nodded, but couldn't resist the urge to tilt her face and claim another kiss. "Yeah, something," she repeated, and met his eyes. "I'm pregnant."

"You're..." He reached up and cupped a hand over her cheek, his eyes glowing. "We're...?"

She nodded, again, giggling softly as he swept her into his arms and hugged her tight to him. "We're going to have a baby. Which is sad, really."

"Sad? How is that sad?" He couldn't stop touching her, couldn't stop kissing her, pressing his lips against every available inch of skin.

"We barely have any time alone together now," she said, her eyes sparkling. "Now it'll be twice as difficult."

"It's worth it," he said, his voice low, and kissed her.

\--

Her rings in his palm. He closed his fingers around them.

He had managed to select the most expensive diamond in the store for her. It was exquisite. Perfect clarity and sparkle, no hint of a blemish. Three days after he had picked it up, he had put it on her finger, and she hadn't taken it off. Until now.

"How much longer?" he asked a nurse just outside her room.

The nurse smiled at him and gave him a reassuring pat on the shoulder. "Not too much longer," she told him. "She's near the end now."

Ned pulled in a long breath and pushed back into the hospital room with the glass of ice water she'd requested. "Any better?" he asked.

Nancy glared at him from the bed, her hair plastered to her forehead. "Tell them to give me drugs or I am going to twist your leg off with my bare hands."

"So, no, then," he said, handing her the water. He watched her eyes flash, but she took a sip and put it on her bedside table just before her face clenched with another labor pain. He laced his fingers between hers and she squeezed them.

"It shouldn't be too much longer."

The doctor came in and pushed Nancy's knees apart, which she bore with little reaction. "All right, here we go," he said, gesturing for the nurse. "Ready?"

Nancy squeezed her husband's hand again. "Okay," she gasped.

They were both trembling at the edge of exhaustion when the first cry rang out, the first breath, and the nurse smiled at them both.

"Congratulations. It's a boy."

Nancy took their son into her arms and Ned pushed back the edge of the blanket to see his face, for the first time, flushed red and angry like his mother's, and beautiful.

"Hey little boy," Nancy cooed softly, tracing his cheek with a soft fingertip. "Hey little Cole." She moved and soft blue eyes were gazing up into Ned's, taking his breath away. His son. Their son.

"Say hello to your daddy."


End file.
